14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this month, US space agency NASA produced a new animation showing what dwarf planet Ceres looks like up close.
The video, available below, comprises images obtained by the Dawn spacecraft, which launched in January 2006 and placed itself in Ceres' orbit in March 2015.
Of the images included in this animation revealing landscapes on Ceres, some were taken from a distance of about 8,400 miles (13,600 kilometers) from the orb.
Other views, however, were obtained from an altitude of merely 3,200 miles (5,100 kilometers) and show craters on the dwarf planet in unprecedented detail.
“The images come from Dawn's first mapping orbit at Ceres, at an altitude of 8,400 mile (13,600 kilometers), as well as navigational images taken from 3,200 miles (5,100 kilometers) away.”
“The images provided information for a three-dimensional terrain model,” NASA mission scientists write in the video's description.
Last week, the Dawn spacecraft moved into a lower orbit, i.e. at an altitude of just 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) from the surface of its target orb. It is to remain in this orbit until June 30.
As shown in the image accompanying this article, Ceres circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. The reason it is called a dwarf planet is that, unlike Earth and its siblings, it has not yet cleared its orbit.
