Mysterious mountain looms above landscape in new Ceres photo

Some of the geological features studied and imaged by the Dawn spacecraft since it began orbiting Ceres months ago are featured in a photo series released by NASA scientists this Tuesday.

In October, Dawn will make an even closer approach, descending until it is a mere 230 miles above Ceres.

Dawn took the new images when it was flying about 915 miles (1,470 km) from the surface of Ceres – the largest object in the main asteroid belt – on August 18-19. Mission managers are now trying to gauge Ceres’ gravitational pull to determine how far they can lower Dawn’s orbital path.

The new images offer a closer look at some of the mysterious aspects of Ceres’ surface, including the massive Gaue crater, which is 52 miles (84 km) in diameter.

NASA explains: “Its perimeter is sharply defined, with nearly no accumulated debris at the base of the brightly streaked slope with bright streaks”. Each 11-day cycle consists of 14 orbits.

But scientists don’t yet know the origins of the color and texture variations on the surface of Ceres. This topographic map was constructed from analyzing images from Dawn’s camera taken from varying angles, and combining a multitude of images of the dwarf planet. This view was acquired on August 19, 2015, from a distance of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers).

Ceres is about 590 miles (950 km) wide and holds joint status as an asteroid and a dwarf planet. It orbited protoplanet Vesta for 14 months in 2011 and 2012, and arrived at Ceres on March 6, 2015.

This may soon be put to the test, because Dawn also captured an unnamed “mountain ridge, near lower left, that lies in the center of Urvara [Indian and Iranian deity of plants and fields] crater on Ceres…” Gaue is a Germanic goddess to whom offerings are made in harvesting rye. The center of this crater is sunken in.