Slashdot Mirror
Dawn Takes First Pictures of Vesta From Orbit
thebchuckster writes with a photo gallery in International Business Times. From the article "NASA's Dawn, locked in orbit around Vesta, has sent back the first ever close-up image of the asteroid 'So far, the images received to date reveal a complex surface that seems to have preserved some of the earliest events in Vesta's history, as well as logging the onslaught that Vesta has suffered in the intervening eons,' said Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell."
Not just "an artist rendering of what Vesta might look like", complete with red background nebula and alien laser installations? Congrats, Slashdot. Even the anaglyph picture in the 4th link is kinda cool, in a seriously retro way. Of course, the linked page has white text in gray boxes in a black background, complemented with color pictures of a gray rock in a way that seems deliberately designed to make my eyes bleed... but I can get over it. Can't believe we finally got an article on space with actual, real pictures. Yay!
The photos reveal a heavily-cratered gray surface.
Well, I no one ever said real photos would be terribly interesting to the non-scientist. For those who are interested, however, here is NASA's complete archive of Dawn photography.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Scientists have concluded that it looks like a big rock.
If I had thought about it that long I wouldn't have been first post though.
I'm a complete idiot with this sort of thing, but why did they orbit so far away (9k miles)? It surely can't have that great of a gravitational pull, can it? Why not get as close as is prudent (or is 9k miles the prudence limit)? It seems like the closer the better for studying the thing.
You people need some patience and perspective. Here's one of the previous state of the art pictures: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Vesta-HST-Color.jpg . And apart from the huge improvement already evident there's the fact that Dawn is supposed to be in orbit for a year. Expecting maximum performance at this point is misguided.
Am I the only person who is amazed by this stuff? Dawn is shot into space at 25,000 miles per hour, cruises by Mars for a gravity-assist flyby eventually (and nearly 4 years later) winding up in orbit of an asteroid that's only 330 miles in diameter whereupon it takes some pictures and sends them back....
I can't even huck a frisbee and have it wind up where I want it to be...
"I was on an airplane and there was high-speed Internet on the airplane. That's the newest thing that I know exists. And I'm sitting on the plane and they go, open up your laptop, you can go on the Internet.
"And it's fast, and I'm watching YouTube clips. It's amaz--I'm on an airplane! And then it breaks down. And they apologize, the Internet's not working. And the guy next to me goes, 'This is b___s___.' I mean, how quickly does the world owe him something that he knew existed only 10 seconds ago?""