Neat shot
My scope only shows a speck, moving slowly between the stars
First snap of giant asteroid Vesta from orbiting probe
NASA's Dawn asteroid hunter has returned the first photo of Vesta since achieving orbit around the giant object at the end of last week. The snap (big version here) was grabbed at a distance of 9,900 miles (16,000 kilometres), and shows Vesta's impressive 530 kilometre (330 mile) diameter bulk beginning to come into focus. …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Just an empty water tank
Just an empty water tank.
my coat: i 'as a mauve one.
@Clangers
Don't give up hope. According to the Dawn mission website, each pixel in that image corresponds to 0.88 miles. Dustbin lids are quite a bit smaller than that.
@Clangers 2
Also they were on a "small planet somewhere in space" IIRC. Clearly that was before Pluto was so shockingly demoted, so it (and Cares, if it's big enough) may be in with a chance, I don't think this one ever counted as a planet.
As Mr Bell above said "don't give up hope"
The Clangers might find them first
Maybe Small Clanger will come out in the music boat and reel in the Dawn probe with that fishing line and magnet.
Fuzzy
Dissapointing, seems rather fuzzy.
I wonder what the cammera the sensor size and focal length are (unless it's some sort of scanned sensor). By my calculation 16000km away 530km diameter should cover approx 1.9 deg which would roughly fill a 36mm frame with a 1000mm lens.
Paris, another heavenly body! (so I'm told)
@Fuzzy
The resolution of the camera is actually not too brilliant (1024 x 1024). But I imagine those sneaky boffins know what they are up to. Things should get quite a lot sharper when the spacecraft gets much nearer to Vesta. And since it will be in orbit for quite a while, who knows, they may be able to artificially increase the resolution from multiple passes.
http://www6.cet.edu/dawn/multimedia/docs/camera.pdf
Close-ups?
Isn't this close to the perfect snap? Surely, when the probe is at closest approach, it will send thousands of detailed pictures, each of 1 square km of surface, or something - doubtless invaluable to the scientists looking for evidence to support their pet theories of planetary evolution, but hardly the stuff that makes newspaper headlines.
Unless, of course, they manage to snap somebody snapping them.
Personally, I'm more interested in Phobos, with its interestingly low density which MIGHT just suggest that there are hollow spaces inside. It's time we investigated that.
Mayan prediction
Is this the asteroid that will be responsible for destroying the Earth in 2012?
May have been all right if some probe or other hadn't knocked it out of it's usual orbit.
Lovely stuff
Vesta, then Ceres! Thank you people with money for sending us these pictures!
Vista/Vesta
So...there's a large, bloated, boring, useless object floating around in the asteroid belt? That'll be me...I punted my copy of vista into space within 24hrs of using it.
Oh wait...VEsta, not VIsta? aaaah.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Popular Whitepapers
- The BI Inflexion Point
Information is a right, not a privilege - VPN security - if you want it, come and get it
Attention WiFi hotspotters: You want it - The Register Guide to iSCSI
A primer on Internet SCSI, a protocol to transport SCSI commands over IP - Secure Mobile Working
Beyond the Technology - The Impact of IT Security Attitudes
Putting the pieces in place for effective security delivery - The Register guide to unified communications
A primer on the implications of unified communications for enterprise IT
