14 DAY TRIAL // Towards the end of last week, on February 12, NASA's Dawn probe snapped two new images of dwarf planet Ceres, a celestial body orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
The images in question were released just yesterday and are available below. Admittedly, they are not NASA's most impressive work, at least not in terms of coolness.
They are, however, surprisingly sharp and clear, especially when compared to the other views of the dwarf planet Ceres the agency's Dawn spacecraft has until now beamed back to Earth.
When it snapped these images, the probe found itself at a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) from Ceres. Hence the fact that the images are clear enough to show the crater's on the dwarf planet's surface.
“The latest images, which have a resolution of 4.9 miles (7.8 kilometers) per pixel, represent the sharpest views of Ceres to date,” NASA astronomers explain.
A couple of weeks from now, on March 6, the Dawn spacecraft will reach Ceres and hopefully manage to place itself in the dwarf planet's orbit. After this, it will get to work studying the celestial body in unprecedented detail.
Astronomers are confident that, once this NASA probe starts peering into the dwarf planet's anatomy, they will gain a better understanding of what white spots and the craters visible on the surface of Ceres are all about.
