Vesta in almost natural colors (filters centered at 440, 650 and 750 nm).
Two basic images:





English captions and 5 other versions are here.
Original "raw" images are available here.

Wow, it is very remarkable that, even in natural colors, the ejecta blanket around Oppia has an obviously different shade of gray. Congratulations, Machi, terrific images.

... and the full disk one fills in a bit more of the northern hemisphere. Here's my current coverage map of the north pole. Locations may not be very accurate at the terminator but the general appearance is clear.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Impressive, Phil!
Is grooves spiral structure real? Which is explaination?
I have impression that North pole is hiding something important but I suspect we have to wait looong time before seeing it!

Dilo,
We are all waiting to see what the north pole hides, and according to our calculations we should be able to see most of it by July 2012. We will keep you posted.

The spiral pattern is mostly a map projection effect. One of our team has located them and they fit great circles.

Thanks pablo!

Sounds like they are due to the impacts of orbiting debris.

On Iapetus, that process is called on to create a ridge... can it do both?

Phil

If you watch the replay of the presentation that I linked to above, they mention that they are wide, flat-bottomed with steep sides. Certainly don't sound like crater chains. The also believe the ages of the equatorial ones correspond to the Rheasilvia impact and the northern ones to the older southern basin.

Impact debris here would form radial or spiral from the center. These are extension cracks formed from several possible sources. Examples include shape change and reorientation. Among others. It's proving difficult to get the exact ages however and we have some numerical models yet to test. Should be interesting!

Wow ! Great work, and thank you for the raw. How did you get these ?

I haven't much informations about this, I know only, that it's from anonymous source in the Dawn team and it was one-time thing, so we must
wait now for another (raw) data until official release (~ end of year 2012).

Ok. Thanks Machi.

As probably you noticed in the simulator, starting from yesterday Dawn ignited engines and started spiraling toward LAMO:
Click to view attachment
Edit: I updated the plot with last data...

Hi Machi,

Our "raw" FC images are certainly not in 8 bit PNG format and we don't produce them in Photoshop, so what you obtained from this anonymous source cannot be described as raw. You had to work with what you had, and you did a fine job producing those color images, but it is beyond me how Emily can present your images on her blog as "nearly natural color".

Stefan.

Hi Stefan


Yes, I wrote this inaccurately. What I wanted to write is, that this kind of images
(directly derived from real raw images, with some basic informations about them,
which allow this kind of processing), will not be available until next year.
All published images are without these informations, or they are strongly derived.


Thanks!


Because source images are not in appropriate spectral bands and even more, I have no idea, if these are calibrated or not,
I don't know exactly how close to "natural" these images are. Some published spectra looks flat for Vesta (in visible),
so I tried similar settings for final images.
For now, few images in "natural" colors was published (here) , so
direct comparison is possible (btw these images are using red on 700 nm).

ADMIN FORMATTING EDIT

Engines cut-off few hours ago, around 530 km height... probably thrust will resume soon:

What is the target altitude for LAMO? Edit found it:180 km. That low to get gravity field. See Marc Rayman's December 10, 2010 post on the Dawn Jornal

Further update, showing in grey periods with engines off (with very indicative start/end times):
Click to view attachment
Based on a private comunication from Dr Rayman, these thrust interruptions will become more frequent while descending in Vesta's gravity field; main purpose is to re-orient spacecraft in order to transmit radiometric data and establish/transmit new thrust profile.

Edit: updated to Nov,7 18:00 UTC - new engine stop lasting 21 hrs, up to now!

As anticipated, engine stops are more and more frequent (grey areas in the following updated plot):
Click to view attachment
Not sure about exact on/off times, also because yesterday there was a black-out in the Mystic page connection (maintenance issue?).

Edit: updated plot to Nov.10

Some interesting "simulated true color" images added at the end of October.
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imageo...p?date=20111028

Crazy contrast, really. So I guess that begs the question of whether it's simulated but stretched.

Here is my colour version of Vesta. Thanks machi for this raw images.

Click to view attachment

Cranking up the saturation on the last image to help reveal the extent of different color units...


Click to view attachment


Phil

Nice work, Adam! Phil, based on your experience with cranking up the saturation on photos of odd-shaped bodies, do you think that the change in color from north to south is real or does it have more to do with photometric effects?

"Phil, based on your experience with cranking up the saturation on photos of odd-shaped bodies, do you think that the change in color from north to south is real or does it have more to do with photometric effects?


Hmmm... on any normal world I'd say I was worried about photometric effects, but we know the south polar terrain is different in this case, so I expect it's some combination of both things.

I think tree ornaments made to look like solar system objects would be a winner. I would buy them...


Phil