This image of Ceres, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows a densely cratered region centered at 48 degrees north latitude, 286 degrees east longitude. The craters in the image are characterized by different degrees of freshness, reflecting different ages. The sharply defined crater to right of center is named Takel, after the Malaysian goddess in charge of the tuber harvest. Takel has a diameter of 13 miles (21 kilometers) and features a narrow tongue-like deposit extending outward from its lower rim.
Dawn took this image on Oct. 1, 2015, from an altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). It has a resolution of 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel.
The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington D.C. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science.
The Dawn framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The framing camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR, and NASA/JPL.
More information about Dawn is online at http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA