Moontanman Posted October 14, 2015 Posted October 14, 2015 Is there something wrong with the Dawn spacecraft? I was expecting huge numbers of detailed pictures now, especially of the light spots but so far not much is being said.
Janus Posted October 14, 2015 Posted October 14, 2015 Dawn has just started the last of 6 mapping cycles. In each cycle, the probe takes photos of the entire surface with its camera pointed in different directions. This allows Dawn to create a topographical map of Ceres. Since it takes 11 days to complete and transmit a mapping cycle, This takes awhile. This is what Dawn has been doing for the last couple of months. The photos are being taken, they are waiting for all of them to assemble the map. Here's a composite image of the bright spots taken on August 22. ( it is a combination of two photos at different exposures. The bright spots tend to over-expose at exposures that show good detail for the rest of the surface.) Since this is the best we are going to get from this orbital altitude, we will have to wait until Dawn moves into a lower orbit to get better detail. Mission updates can be found here: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status.html
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