25.11.2011 - Topography and albedo image of part of Lucaria Tholus quadrangle

These Dawn FC (framing camera) images show part of Lucaria Tholus quadrangle in Vesta’s northern hemisphere. The left image is an albedo image, which is taken directly through the clear filter of the FC. Such an image shows the albedo (eg. brightness/ darkness) of the surface. The right image uses the same albedo image as its base but then a color-coded height representation of the topography is overlain onto it. The topography is calculated from a set of images that were observed from different viewing directions, allowing stereo reconstruction. The various colors correspond to the height of the area. The white area in the bottom of the image is the highest area and the blue area in the top of the image is the lowest area. Lucaria Tholus quadrangle is in Vesta’s heavily cratered northern hemisphere. Many craters, with different preservation states from fresh through degraded to ruined, are visible in these images. Two large ruined craters are partially visible in the top of the albedo image. These craters show up more clearly as the large, roughly circular, blue depressions in the top of the topography image.

This image is centered in Vesta’s Lucaria Tholus quadrangle and the center latitude and longitude of the image is 16.5°N, 82.0°E. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on October 23rd 2011. This image was taken through the camera’s clear filter. The distance to the surface of Vesta is 702 km and the image has a resolution of about 70 meters per pixel. This image was acquired during the HAMO (High Altitude Mapping Orbit) phase of the mission.

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.