This is my attempt to reduce shading and jpeg artifacts and improve gamma/contrast fo everxposed region:

Is there any way of knowing the viewing angle? I'm wondering if Vesta is angled slightly oriented showing the south hemisphere, and we're looking into the South crater. You can vaguely see what looks like the rim of the big crater, and yes, very degraded.

Very nice re-rendering.

Here's my shot at de-clipping the image. Warning: some artistic interpretation in the clipped border - I manually used a paintbrush to set the clipping mask.

Click to view attachment

You're not kidding. Add some lens flare and that could be one of mine...!

"Cleaned up" versions much better, well done everyone.

Yeah that one was uuuuugly. That swatch in the middle looks like it was cut with scissors and pasted on.

Images acquired from this time onwards should have over twice the resolution of the last released image. Can't wait to see more!

I just now saw this. Thanks!

I usually tell people that UMSF is a place for serious amateurs who want to experiment with new ways to visualize data from unmanned space probes--and for the rest of us who just like to look at the pictures. I think it's very cool that you gave us a picture that was not just nice to look it; it gave people here a way to show off what they can do. :-)

Thanks again.

--Greg

Firstly, thanks to the Dawn team for posting this new image.


This can probably be seen by taking a look at the earlier rotation movie, even though its resolution is lower. Actually these approach images nicely illustrate the value of movies. The most recent image is much better than the earlier images but in some cases it's difficult to distinguish between topographic shading and albedo features. The difference between the two is more obvious in a movie. Here I get the impression that we are looking at both but it's difficult to be sure.

"Is there any way of knowing the viewing angle?"

Check out post 259 earlier in this thread. The movies are indeed very useful.

Phil

Today, Dawn is 60400 km from Vesta, which now appears as big to Dawn as the Moon appears to Earth observers. I suppose we could say that's some kind of milestone. An image of Vesta now would be close to 100 pixels across.

I prefer to look at this similarly to Earth received time for spacecraft events, only in this case it's a delay of N days until we all (the public) see that image. Not really much point in thinking how big Vesta appears to Dawn at this moment or how soon it's downlinked to the ground, is there?

True, and that's a problem, I think. Have to be honest here - and by this I mean no disrespect whatsoever to the fine efforts of the Framing Camera team's generosity with their time on this forum's Q&A, which is a brilliant gesture, thank you again! - but this is the first major mission in a long time that I haven't felt a part of, and that I've actually, sometimes, felt like my interest in the mission and its science isn't appreciated or wanted by the people at the head of it. That is probably very unfair, but it's how I feel. This lack of images is taking a lot away from Dawn and the revelation of Vesta for me personally. It feels more like we're in occasional contact with a submarine on a deep ocean mission, that only surfaces long enough to send back a burst of info before sinking beneath the waves again.

The images available now must be *wonderful*, but they're scattered across desks or sitting on hard drives, only being seen by a few people - who deserve to see them, obviously, but the world has moved on, and it means this is something of an "aloof" mission, I feel. Great shame.

Oh well. I'm sure the next image release will be fantastic, really looking forward to that.

Agree Stu. It reminds me of the late 1970s when I used to have to wait for the weekly thin copy of Science News at the school library to get a photo or two from Viking. In fact under those circumstances I was seeing images MORE frequently than we are getting from Dawn.

I've agreed to host and present at a Vesta Fiesta event at our local museum to celebrate the arrival. I'm kinda hoping there are a few more images to show off or it's could be a less-than-enthralling presentation.....

I have the same concerns, Mike. I have quite a few Outreach talks and events lined up, one at the end of the week, and I'm worried about the lack of images. I'm also lending my meteorite collection to my local Museum soon, and want to create a Vesta display to go around my little piece of Eucrite meteorite.

This lack of images is at best disappointing and frustrating, and at worst, well... embarrassing.

Not just one or two : they were tens of pics releases from the Vikings (orbiters & landers) weekly from JPL and Langley to the Press during their Primary missions. The Press -unable to publish them all- had to make a selection : this is why you saw less pics than the ones released officially...
=> It's a pity that Dawn seems not to have reached yet the same level of Public Outreach that was the norm in 1976...

There is an article on "Ciel & Espace" July release including a picture of Vesta... from Hubble.
Christopher Russell (from Dawn) comment that "they" feel been as Colombus getting closer and closer to a new world. It is exactely how I feel myself: a few people "on" the ship while the entire world is waiting!
We're back to 15th century Olivier, not even to 35 years ago
I've been watching all the firts approach phases of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus on the press and I even get from France specialy to Pasadena to watch Voyager II Neptune fly by. Feeling "been there" is what I'm looking for. I guess it's time for Nasa to make pictures releases mendatory in their AO's.

My feeling is that the science team want a grand "unveiling" of Vesta to the media and public. And while the few images we have had so far might be intriguing to people on here and other forums, they may not generate much interest from the general public or media - or even worse people may think they are just not that good and up with negative criticism Then there's the short attention span - I think when Spirit landed they lost interest before it had even driven off the lander - until the memory problem of course

Not long to wait anyway!!!!!

I must say that I didn't experience any public loss of interest in Spirit after landing and up till the Flash memory issue.
For me, it was 5 months before interest started to die down (and even then it's lingered for 7.5years). In the early months I was hardly at home - busy doing talks and media.
The pictures were outstanding from the MERs (the Rovers also 'looked' cute/cool) and THAT's what got the public so caught up in them.

I wish we could have the same with Dawn and Vesta. I do think that it's a different world now though.
What's changed is that there is a new army out there of Outreach ambassadors working at their own level to a local or regional audience (some go wider through media) who have the experience and banter to turn even (what may seem to some) the most basic of images and information into a story, a presentation, that captures the interest and ongoing attention of their audience.
If done well, then that effort gets an otherwise uninterested or uninformed public to take an interest and to take a look at what's going on either regularly or at least occasionally, rather than not at all.

While we at UMSF have had it so good for so long and wish for new images to be available for us to work/play with, in this instance we will just have to wait.
I think that the wait will be worthwhile Even with the current images (both official and UMSFified) there is still a story to tell.

Let's give credit to the DAWN mission, especially for the personal Q&A they are allowing our Forum audience to enjoy.

I do think that this discussion is being noticed and that with the public (us included) showing our interest in all things robotic space exploration, then we might one day see 'fast/often image releases' become the future standard. Until then, we wait and look a MER and Cassini images and support Zooniverse exploration etc.

If you're doing Outreach talks don't forget that you can 'show' your audience the entire "Dawn Approaches Vesta" phase in excellent 'virtual' context through Eyes on the Solar System
"Look, it's getting closer!"
Click to view attachment

pablogm1024 said here http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...=6998&st=15 that they were taking OpNav images about twice a week which means that there have been about three or four OpNav image sets taken since that June 24 image.

Dawn is almost 100,000km closer than it was on June 24th when the last image was taken. When they get around to posting again there should be a lot more detail. I thought we would get at least one new image a week by now and maybe even two, instead the last image posted was from two weeks ago...very disapointing

Hopefully there will be another post by Friday, as happened last week.

NASA News article -- moon search
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/scien...6jul_vestamoon/

Another image has been posted on the DAWN site.

From July 1, 2011:

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/dawn_v...mage_070111.asp

Awesome!

OMG

Stunning!

My take on it...

Awesome indeed! That's quite a central peak... my impression is that we are approaching on a path that brings us under the south pole, so the view into the basin is opening up wider with each image.

Also... there's a clear boundary between smoother and rougher areas, which (with hindsight) is also visible in the previous image, and looks like it coincides with an albedo boundary... and the big south polar basin is flattened rather than concave, probably because it formed on a body whose radius is about the same as the basin itself (think south polar depression on Deimos) - the walls would form on a part of the body which isn't there as the surface curves away from the impact point.

Phil

Noisy, I know, and probably enhancing already-existing crud and not claiming any usefulness... but... wow...!!!

Click to view attachment

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~shane/PTYS_554...ug_grl_2011.pdf
http://planetary.org/blog/article/00002906/

Looking prescient.

It looks a bit like Epimetheus' South pole.

I did further sharpening in addition to gamma/contrast adjustment:
Click to view attachment
As I suspected from previous images (and as highlighted by Phil) patches of smoother (recent?) terrain are confirmed, especially in some regions around equator, while craterizations inside the super-crater around south pole seems higher...

"It looks a bit like Epimetheus' South pole"

Fran - you are right. I think that's exactly what we see at Epimetheus.

Phil

I have no words! It's so different world! Vesta looks like some hybrid between Hyperion and Enceladus.
Even south crater doesn't looks like crater (is it really crater?).
And smooth areas on asteroid of size of the Mimas! Really extraordinary.

I guess I am a little fuzzy on formation of center peaks. Isn't the slumping of the walls and compressing the center regions of the 'hole' what mounds up the peak?

How does this work when the impactor is big enough to blow the crater walls plumb off the asteroid entirely? Or are we seeing 'core' swelling into the 'wound'?


Amazing something this weird and wonderful is already apparent, this is going to be a fun goomer to be looking over for the next year.

No, slumping of the walls is not involved. It's compression of the surface under the impact followed by rebound.

Phil

Cool-o animation of a crater formation sequence (Done for a terrestrial impact):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...b-animation.gif

My quick guestimate of the height of the center peak based on its shape and shadow is around 36 km above the crater plain. This is one huge mountain!

That's going to look good closeup

Helene and its north polar crater is another great example.

While people process the newly released image, again keep in mind that it has been magnified from the original. I've attached a de-magnified version (looks like the released version is 4x the raw data).

I wonder if that central peak contains not only mantle stuff, but also some core stuff. THIS is gonna be interesting!

Cool, maybe the core is swelling into the 'wound'.
Wonder what Vesta looks like 180 degrees around, like maybe Mercurian chaotic terrain . . .

I'm astonished by the lack of cratering. This is truly a different personality. I'm looking forward to getting to know her!

Astonishing. It's gunna be one hell of a ride. For some reason, I can't get my eyes around the
appearence of the 'crater' as a mountain. I guess the small body size and resulting
perculiar lighting contribute to the illusion. Wish I had a handfull of playdough, I sure like
to check out this ambiguity.

The mountain is just the central peak. The impact structure as a whole is nearly as big across (~460km) as Vesta's diameter (~530km). In some respects, it's not really a crater or a basin, because it's convex. (Though perhaps not with respect to the gravity gradient - just one more cool thing to find out!)

I'm guessing the smoothness means the impact happened semi-recently (so maybe it's only 3 billion years old, instead of 4...), and great swaths of Vesta are covered by bits that were formerly on the interior.

The smoothness struck me too as odd. Perhaps Vesta was once sheathed in a layer of ice as is Ceres (assuming such ice is indeed present) that was fully or partially removed by the effects of the massive impact, along with the former, cratered surface.

Also, I am quite intrigued by the apparent ridge extending from the mountain. Any ideas (guesses) how such a feature could form, assuming it isn't an artifact due to the low resolution?

I was wondering if that was a debris flow and apron. The next higher resolution image should be interesting.

the spacecraft, meanwhile, had some thruster problem: Dawn Team Members Check out Spacecraft

That certainly what it looks like to me.

In the report, they say "One set of images for navigation purposes was not obtained on June 28 because the spacecraft was in safe-communications mode...". Perhaps, this explain the longer-than-expected waiting for new images, as complained in previous days...

Speaking of surface features, in addition to smoothed terrain and ridge/debris, did someone noticed the apparent tails in one crater, highlighted in green in the following image? If isn't an artifact, how to explain it?

Got it, thanks. Err yeah, one helluva mountain (and crater!)