The Diversity of Vesta, Now Seen in Color

In a new image the NASA Dawn spacecraft collected of the giant asteroid Vesta, the geological layers and ingredients that make up the space rock are made clearly visible. The false-color photo depicts the protoplanet in never-before-seen detail.

The photo has a resolution of 480 meters per pixel, and was captured using Dawn's framing cameras as the probe was approaching its target. The current view was obtained by assigning different colors to the ratios of two wavelengths of radiation that can be detected by the framing camera.

According to experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who manage Dawn, the central areas of the image are blocked off due to an unfavorable arrangement of the spacecraft in relation to Vesta and the Sun. The datasets obtained from the central area are useless.

What the new image made immediately apparent to geologists was that numerous impacts and geological processes have over the eons produced numerous ejecta plumes, which now cover Vesta's surface in intricate patterns.