spacetoday.net: NASA releases new Dawn images of Ceres

NASA releases new Dawn images of Ceres

Posted: Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 7:44 AM ET (1244 GMT)
Ceres seen by Dawn, January 2015 (NASA/JPL)

NASA released on Monday new images of Ceres taken by its Dawn spacecraft as it approaches the dwarf planet. The images, taken last week, are 80 percent the resolution of the best images of Ceres, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope; they were taken for navigation purposes as the spacecraft approaches the world. Dawn is scheduled to go into orbit around Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt and designated a dwarf planet by the IAU in 2006, in March. Dawn, launched in 2007, spent more than a year in 2011 and 2012 orbiting another large body in the main asteroid belt, Vesta.