That kind of reminds me of Rhea's splat crater from up close.

I don't know if I agree. That texture outside the Rhea splat crater is pretty reminiscent of chevron-like patterns in ejecta that you see in lunar craters too. This is decidedly different. The parallel ridge sets definitely seem tectonic. But there'll be a few parallel ridges in one place, then some in another place with a different orientation and spacing, and some places where things cross.

18 to 24 months ....

Someone with "first use" must be waiting for a grant to come through ????
If not then what ?

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dose GEOlogy even apply to a lose collection of gravel

they look more like what one sees when hitting or pushing a damp sand castle at the beach

or better yet
forking a peanutbutter cookie - with macadamia nuts

a sticky loose conglomerate

I'd say lots of normal faulting as the surface adjusts to a significant change in shape, post-impact.

"does GEOlogy even apply to a loose collection of gravel"

Sure does! Geologists frequently work with unconsolidated materials.

Phil

My arm-waving interpretation of the surface within the South Pole Basin :

Click to view attachment

Here, sections of the rim slump down and crumple as they slide against and around the central mound. More slumps slide down and deform the existing deposits. After awhile, there is a (*subtly*) Enceladus-like jumbled mess.

The slumping process was relatively fast at first, but slower creeping of material would have continued to deform the surface over time.

I'm not sure about the parallel features on the central mound. Perhaps the debris flows placed some stress on the edifice as they piled up.

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This corkscrew-like feature here:

Click to view attachment

reminds me of the 'sausage factory' on Enceladus:

Click to view attachment

It looks as if the surface here was stressed in one direction and then 'rolled' in another.

The 'central mound' itself looks pretty complex. To me it looks like is slumped internally, almost as if magma chamber pressure has been withdrawn (caldera like). Im NOT suggesting that this is a caldera BTW

P

I just bought the French journal "Ciel et Espace" of September. There is an article about Dawn at Vesta. In a picture legend they say that, in some unpublished images, scientists identified a structure which could be an ancient volcano, without any more details.
I'm wondering if they speak about the south polar basin 'central mound' (for which we already have some pictures) or if there is another volcano-like feature somewhere else on the surface !!
Best regards,
Marc.

There was actually one respectable scientist at SBAG suggesting that the south pole looked like a place where there'd been some volcanism. To be sure there's not any consensus at all in the community about what any of it means.

While we're waiting for consensus, the LEGO Vesta assembly continues. Having procured more 1x1, 1x3, and 2x2 corner plates from bricklink.com, I've now been able to complete half of the faces. I won't continue though until I've devised how to securely attach them to each other from the hollow interior, which will probably involve some Technic bricks and pins and some partial disassembly.

Are the kiddlings up to building a robotic arm with which to assemble the Lego Vesta?

Three new images this morning - the last three days all at once. Credit where it's due, we are getting good stuff now.

One shows a dark hill. That might be the volcano mentioned by MarcF.

Phil

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/image_...e_day_Aug11.asp

A mosaic of two recent VPODs showing the south polar region.

Phil

Click to view attachment

I've noticed over the last couple weekends that on Saturday and Sunday new images show up over at Photojournal, but aren't added to the Dawn website until Monday along with Monday's picture.

Another nice image today - but check out yesterday's and today's images carefully - one is reversed, mirror image style. A quick check shows yesterday's was the reversed one.

Phil

Dawn is not the only deep space probe observing Vesta:
Photometric observations of asteroid 4 Vesta by the OSIRIS cameras onboard the Rosetta spacecraft

Now that the Survey Orbit phase is over, it would be a good idea to open a new topic. I think this topic should still be left open in case someone wants to comment further, but the debate about the novelties should continue somewhere else.
Regards,
pablogm

Marc Rayman's latest Dawn Journal on photos taken from survey orbit --

"The science camera has similarly overachieved. The intent was to photograph 60 percent of Vesta, but the entire 90 percent not in the darkness of northern winter has been captured at least five times. With pictures taken from multiple angles, stereo views can be constructed; and images at different times allow features to be observed under varied lighting conditions. All of the camera’s color filters were used, providing coverage in the near infrared and visible. Until recently, Vesta was known as little more than a smudge of light, but now scientists have more than 2,800 photos from Dawn’s survey."

And I will say, it's disappointing that there aren't high[er] resolution mosaics available right about now.

So there's in excess of 2800 images in all color filters -- gives quite a sense of what we're missing.

I think there are 21 post orbit insertion images on the website.

Hi fellas!
Ive been quiet lately, absorbing those "2800" + images, among a bedlam of other issues this summer! Sorry I havent posted anything but I hope to be able to from now on with some (ir)regularity. Please keep in mind that those 3000 images have all been repeat coverage of the same areas 7 times all at the same resolution, so its kinda redundant (which is good!). Indeed most of the surface is now in stereo and several anaglyphs have been released. Its hard to believe but a large percentage of the surface has now been released on the web. I have been focused on that large south polar "feature" which is likely a giant impact crater but it has so many peculiarities its taking us some time to map it all out and sort out what it means. We have some interesting ideas we will be sharing soon. We will be having detailed reports on it and all the rest of Vesta at DPS/EPS in France and at GSA in minneapolis starting in October. Now we start slowly creeping into the first hi-res mapping orbits which will more than double our resolution, starting in 3 weeks. Stay tuned!
paul

PIA14680 with the false color portion overlaid and the details enhanced using a hipass filter of the grayscale image. This help correlate the surface false color image with surface features:

Click to view attachment

Those orange pools north (?) of the crater look really, really interesting. If I got the spectral assignments correct they are lacking in green, thus iron-poor. (Green = small ratio of 750 nm to 900 nm, large reflectance at 900 nm, thus not much iron since iron absorbs at 900 nm).

Did some deep iron poor stuff get blown out of the big deep crater, then more deep iron poor stuff ooze up and out?

The E-W (?) streakiness also doesn't seem to be an artifact.


EDIT: Yup! Those orange pools seem to filling local basins. Check out a more oblique angle image here (this thread):

oooooh, very well spotted, Mike!

Update on orbit progress:
Click to view attachment
Note that, even though distance is decreasing, its oscillations are smaller-