This image is one of several NASA’s Dawn spacecraft took on approach to Ceres on 4th February 2015 at a distance of about 90,000 miles (145,000 kilometres) from the dwarf planet. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDANASA’s Dawn spacecraft, on approach to dwarf planet Ceres, has acquired its latest and closest-yet snapshots of this mysterious world. The images of Ceres were taken on 4th February 2015 from a distance of about 90,000 miles (145,000 kilometres).
At a resolution of 8.5 miles (14 kilometres) per pixel, the pictures represent the sharpest images to date of Ceres.This animation showcases a series of images obtained with the Framing Camera of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on approach to Ceres on 4th February 2015 at a distance of about 90,000 miles (145,000 kilometres) from the dwarf planet. The resolution is 8.5 miles (14 kilometers) per pixel. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDAAfter the spacecraft arrives and enters into orbit around the dwarf planet, it will study the intriguing world in great detail. Ceres, with a diameter of 590 miles (950 kilometres), is the largest object in the main asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.
In 1936, infant star FU Orionis began gobbling material from its surrounding disc of gas and dust with a sudden voraciousness, eating the equivalent of 18 Jupiters in the last 80 years. During a three-month binge, as matter turned into energy, the star became 100 times brighter, heating the disc around it to temperatures of up to 6,650 °C.
The first well-resolved colour photos of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, speeding toward a close-up encounter July 14, show a world blotched with dark features spanning two very different sides of the dwarf planet.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has continued its survey of the dwarf planet Ceres this year, discovering rock-bound ice hidden just beneath the airless world’s rugged surface and a handful of icy outcrops inside craters in the northern hemisphere, raising hopes that Ceres could have once held a buried habitable ocean of liquid water.