These Dawn FC (framing camera) images show Urbinia crater, after which Urbinia quadrangle is named. 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 and red areas in the top of the image are the highest areas and the blue areas in the bottom of the image are the lowest areas. Urbinia crater is distinctive because is has an irregularly shaped rim due to the formation of other impact craters along its rim and then subsequent erosion. There are at least 4 smaller impact craters on the rim of Urbinia crater that have changed the shape of the rim. But, the lower halves of these craters have partially slumped into the center of Urbinia crater, which means there is not a distinctive topographic difference between them and the walls of Urbinia crater. This is seen in the topography image because the color-coded heights are not too disrupted by the smaller impacts.
These images are located in Vesta’s Urbinia quadrangle and the center latitude and longitude of the image is 33.4°S, 277.1°E. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on October 13th 2011. This image was taken through the camera’s clear filter. The distance to the surface of Vesta is 700 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 images are lambert-azimuthal map projected.
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