The images are available at NASA’s JPL website.
Dawn will soon become the first human-made probe to visit a dwarf planet. “We know so little about our vast solar system, but thanks to economical missions like Dawn, those mysteries are being solved,” said Jim Green, Planetary Science Division Director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
At 43 pixels across, the images are sharper by 30 percent than images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2003 and 2004. Images taken by Dawn on January 13 showed possible craters, and a white spot on the planet, that researchers hope to investigate.
“The pictures, taken on Sunday, show several dark areas in Ceres’ southern hemisphere that may be craters,” said Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator for the mission. “Ceres is showing us tantalizing features that are whetting our appetite for the detailed exploration to come,” she added.
Dawn will enter “Ceres orbit” on March 6, to capture images and measure variations in reflected light from Ceres, allowing it to understand the planet’s composition. Ceres is the largest body between Mars and Jupiter and is 590 miles across. Some scientists are of the opinion that it may have harbored a subsurface ocean, and may still have liquid water beneath the mantle. Ceres is fairly warm by ice-world standards; temperatures generally range from 180 to 240 Kelvin (or minus-136 degrees Fahrenheit to minus-28 degrees Fahrenheit).
Ceres was discovered in 1801 and classified as a planet, only to be reclassified as an asteroid later on, and finally promoted to dwarf planet in 2006. Ceres is Dawn’s second visit, after Vesta, a proto-planet and the second largest body in the asteroid belt.
