I keep checking back for the new image, nothing yet. I was hoping to find a schedule of DSN communication with Dawn, which I didn't find, but did find this nifty (near) real-time tracking tool:
http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

You're welcome :-)

(I'm part of the team at JPL responsible for DSN Now)

OPNAV3 hasn't been acquired yet. Imaging won't until later this evening, MST. From looking at Celestia, the observations times are (keep in mind that these are just the dwell times, the actual time frame when images are actually being taken is likely shorter and in the middle of these times frames):

Footprint 1: 2015-035 02:13-07:21 UTC
Footprint 2 (centered on Ceres): 2015-035 07:30-10:47 UTC
Footprint 3: 2015-035 10:56-14:35 UTC

The HGA is pointed toward Earth between 2015-035 15:53-2015-036 07:44 UTC (again, it might not be downlinking that entire time)

So maybe some images will be released Thursday, at the earliest?

Nicely done. A neat feature to add in future might be to tie it in with the schedule of activity, something like clicking on an antenna brings-up the schedule of current and upcoming transmissions.

Exciting times! I wondered if someone from JPL could give an indication of how it works with totally new images like these. Who is the first person to see a new image, are there dozens of people gathered round a single monitor as someone decodes the messages? Or is it done privately with a select few in case of embarrassment due to errors?

Very much looking forward to seeing more of Ceres:)

That recalls my year working on Magellan as a tech assistant. one of my jobs was to unroll the prints from each new orbit of Venus as the latest data were processed and printed and report any gaps or flaws in the processed data. These print strips were about 4 inches wide and i foget how many feet long (more than 10 Im sure). I may have been the first to see the largest impact crater Mead, for example. but that is how the data first came down. the global mosaics of Venus we now recognize came a few weeks later after multiple orbits had accumulated.

Dawn is active on the DSN now.

http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

Hi MichaelJWP,
Thanks for your interest. As part of the Framing Camera team, I can tell you that there are three levels of criticality:

• regular operations, such as those in cruise and typically the second half of each observation phase, are only monitored off line. The data pass completes, we get a notification that the raw packets are on the ground, a robot downloads from the server, processes and uploads to the server again. Regular business.
• important operations, such as most of the optical navigation slots, are monitored as close to real time as possible from MPS in Göttingen, Germany. This means that we receive real time telemetry from the spacecraft as soon as it points to Earth after the observation is completed and we can make a first assessment of the success of the operations based on the number of errors that the camera reports. Then we follow the downlink of the images from the spacecraft in real time, mainly in order to confirm before the end of the pass if the images are complete. Once the downlink is complete, we receive an email with the notification and fall back to the first case.
• for essential operations, such as the rotational charaterizations (RCs) and the beginning of each observations phase, two operators from our team travel to the Dawn Science Center at UCLA, while the rest of the team monitors from MPS. These allows the in-situ discussion of mitigation measures at JPL should the need arise. Among the scenarios we are ready to cover are safing of the camera (with the required recovery actions) or wild changes in the observation conditions that would require and actual modification of the command sequences.

So the bottom line is that yes, a couple of people were monitoring the arrival of the images yesterday evening.
I believe that there is a press release scheduled for today, but do not hold me accountable for it if it does not happen. If you have any additional questions, I will be mostly pleased to answer.

Hello pablogm1024.
Thank you for the information.

And yes also I had a look at the DSN page and noted that dish 43 in Canberra were working on Dawn around midnight for us.
So yes lets hope we get to see another hint of our interesting little world today. =)

Thanks for the info, always interesting to get the detail. Waiting now with bated breath!

Here we go... starting

http://www.mps.mpg.de/3902247/PM_2015_02_0...ilder_von_Ceres

I sure hope they put up the raw pics -- I'm finding the global projection video less clear in many ways than what we saw last time. The single image of the side opposite what we've seen before is good, though.

There's definitely a Y-shape in the rotating image (should correspond to the apparent linear features [EDIT: apparently not]), but the image quality is too low there too make much sense out of it. I guess more pics are about to be released soon (hopefully in a matter of minutes or hours..).

You beat me to it, but yes here they are!

We got a new hemisphere to view, craters near the south pole certainly are confirmed as such at this resolution, no surprise there.
Now one might be fooled by the Sun shines more on the northern hemisphere, even so Ceres do appear less rugged around the equator and temperate northern latitudes. Though there's certainly a large ones at 9 o'clock.

To me this is a good teaser for February 19. =)

Interesting...the images are released via NASA now, too; but still just the same two image products. No still frame of the hemisphere photographed previously; i.e. no still frames containing the "linear features" or the "bright spot".

Almost like they're keeping a little something to themselves, for the moment

Maybe I was/is just being impatient, here's a better quality version containing the entire rotation: https://twitter.com/NASA_Dawn/status/563354247601729538

Still not the best quality, though.

EDIT: And Habukaz has beat me to it by a few seconds

To me, the other bright spots definitely look like small ray craters, but you know, I'm not so sure now about the main bright spot now. You can't see any actual rays extending from it, but you can from some of the other bright spots.

Agree that the main bright spot gets more tantalizing as resolution gets better .... probably an illusion but almost looks like it is pronounced a bit rather than in a depression?!

Craig

The hazards of relaying Twitter news.



I think it can just as well give the opposite impression in the non-projected (correct term?) rotation video.

Yeah... as fas as bright spot being a bit pronounced think fooling myself. Will know more soon!

some of us came to these conclusions last night as well . . . !

This global animation lets me guess this bright spot could be a mountain.
Probably we'll see it at Ceres disk border in one of the OPNavs and can even calculate its height

Certainly a lot of complex structure starting to show in the bright spot... pronounced or not...

I see a brighter spot to the bright patch, which is below the center of the patch, a dark semi halo centred on the NE direction, nothing definitively ray - like. I think there is also a teensy tounge of dark material coming southwards into the bright patch? Whatever it is, this is very cool.

While we wait for the (more or less) raw images to be released, here's a better animation: https://twitter.com/Callichore/status/563373636443070464

The big "bright" spot appears to be sitting at one edge of a dark area; wonder if that's something real. Some linear stuff near it, too (like below to the right); but could also just be an illusion/artefact.

Definitely more details on Ceres surface this time.
Animation made using grabbed frames from first animation with some brightness/contrast improved in PS.

Ceres animation 130ms animGIF

Ceres animation 230ms animGIF

Toma, your reversing gif is very nice for peering at! Most of the surface relief appears in the south--the ridges come closest to having relative height by my eye. And as far as interpreting the large white spot, I still think the dark spoil is 'butterfly" ejecta that may have a different texture or age than the other sites with brighter rays. Jury's open for me.

The surface is heavily cratered which everywhere else would suggest a 4 billion Year old surface produced by the late heavy bombardment. However, I am not so sure about interpreting Asteroid belt surfaces. Perhaps the heavy bombardment is ongoing.

Grabbed a few frames and performed some digital hi-jinks with them.

Phil

Click to view attachment

The bright spots seem to be limited to the northern hemisphere. It could be due to the lighting, though. Can't wait for more images to get a complete picture....

Well, there are some very definite signs of LHB-style cratering around the southern polar region, where we get a lower sun angle and shadows are more pronounced. This sure leads the eye to perceive the mottling evident at higher sun angles as cratering, as well. I can convince myself that I see a huge basin about a quarter of the way around the planet, to the east, from the White Spot. It seems picked out by very small white dots arrayed in an arc that could well define an outer rim wall of a huge basin.

However, some of the features appear to be albedo variations not associated with shadows. That would jibe with the Hubble images showing varying albedo features on the fully lit disk. In particular, the White Spot looks more and more to me like a volcanic construct than a crater. It just resembles the volcanoes on Io more than it resembles a crater, what with the lack of rays and the partial arc of darker material to the north and lighter material to the south. Sort of like a bruised-eye effect, which is exactly reminiscent of Ionian volcanoes, to me.

Of course, it could be an impact crater with an extremely complex ejecta pattern. But any crater that remains that bright ought to have generated rays, and as we get closer, we're not seeing any evidence of such.

Also, maybe it's just me, and maybe it's just something inherent in the opnav camera, but... Ceres doesn't look completely round to me, here. It looks oblate, like it was squashed at the poles. Since we have rarely been able to resolve Ceres as a disk, has there been much in the way of published observations relating to its relative roundness? Or are we looking at its possible demotion from dwarf planet back to just an asteroid...?

-the other Doug

It's not round in the images because Dawn is not coming directly from the sunward direction; we have a better view of the southern hemisphere, so it's slightly gibbous given our angle of incidence. Compare with the Hubble images, which were right around opposition.

Ceres is slightly oblate. The equatorial diameter is 974.6 km while the polar diameter is only 909.4 km.

Iovian mountains.... but not necessarily volcanic origin:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/scitech/images...0427-487-15.jpg

The "Great White Spot" debate, here's my twopenneth. From the NASA still image and the first animation, there is definitely a mountain involved, it reminds me of Mt. Sharp in Gale crater on Mars. The Sun angle sure does highlight the heavily battered Southern Polar region, the mottled appearance of the equatorial region and the Northern Hemisphere suggest that level spots and regions without craters are few and far between.

Thoma B's improved GIF seems to show another "White Mountain" in the equatorial region on the Eastern edge. I think comparisons with Europa and Enceladus are out, the moons of Uranus are still looking to be the most likely analogues and maybe Ganymede.

Click to view attachment
Laid the images out sequentially, allowing cross-eyed stereo.

The surface definitely has its own character, no doubt about it. Those apparent dark albedo features are most intriguing; can't think of a plausible deposition mechanism other than impact fallout & those don't look much like that. That in turn might mean that they're ancient crust that's escaped major impacts for a LONG time--seems implausible.

This is gonna be a good ride.

I wonder if some mottling could result from slump deposits within impact basins similar to those on Vesta. Judging by its shadows when near the left terminator, the mottled feature near the south pole, due south of the prominent bright/dark spot, seems to be such a basin.

It reminds me of this: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6IojryxFSZs/Tt1k...Crater+with+Ice

Ceres is suppose to have a very low axial tilt, estimated at three degrees or so. We should therefore be seeing a similar low sun angle near the northern pole. But we are not seeing the same topography there. Either the tilt is more pronounced than was believed, or else the northern hemisphere is smoother. Or perhaps being oblate the way it is exaggerates the lighting effects of the tilt.

Granted that the spacecraft is getting a better look at the south pole too, but still...

Just noting that all these white spots appear in the north, at this point I'm betting there are other differences there too, topography possibly being one of them.

I too wondered about the smoother northern limb, but I think the southern limb appears rougher because of the interplay between lit and shadowed areas that are not quite discernible at the current low resolution.

A low axial tilt but a considerable orbital one. Do we know the actual viewing and lighting geometry here? It's fairly obvious we are not viewing at full phase.

'Great White Spot' debate... luv it.

Know I am waving my hands to the choir here but.... how Cool is this?
Here we are debating features on a world all of humanity is seeing for the first time. In all of human history
there is only One first time. And we are active participants. Thanks to this forum.

When the new digital text books are written.... we were there.

Holder: "Ceres is suppose to have a very low axial tilt, estimated at three degrees or so. We should therefore be seeing a similar low sun angle near the northern pole. But we are not seeing the same topography there."

No, that's not how it works. We are viewing from south of the equator - the axial tilt tells us the sun is overhead near the equator, but we are looking from further south. At the south pole we are looking over ridges and crater rims and seeing the shadows they cast. In the north, the ridges and rims block our view of the shadows. It's totally different viewing. Compare it with a view of an almost full moon - on one edge the terminator shows stark relief. On the other side you see nothing but albedo markings.

Phil

Just me?
Click to view attachment

One problem with the white spot is that we really do not know about a possible contrast stretch in the released images (my guess though is that there is little or no contrast stretch). Also it's only bright relative to the surrounding terrain, in reality it's probably not white (although that depends on its size). My guess is that this is simply a small and very fresh impact crater (or at least something associated with an impact crater). I'll be very surprised if this turns out to be something else.



As Phil mentioned, the viewing/illumination geometry means that we see the terminator in the south and this makes the southern limb more irregular. This is a schematic view showing the viewing geometry on January 25 (it hasn't changed much since then):

Click to view attachment

Fresh impact crater was my first impression... but not small and no fresh ejecta. More going on here.

Looking at the Ceres Layer diagram on this web page
http://www.space.com/22891-ceres-dwarf-planet.html
I would think the white areas are where an impact has blown off the "thin dusty outer crust" and exposed the water-ice layer below.

How much of an impact does it take to eject stuff at escape velocity.
Does the vaporized water fall back onto the surface like snow (ice crystals)?
How deep would an impactor go?
Would the ejected material shoot out in a thin jet?

Thanks for showing the viewing and lighting geometry, Bjorn. While Ceres has little axial tilt, the view point is from above Ceres' southern hemisphere, so we see the southern terminator and the south pole, but not the north pole. There may well be topography near the equator and northern hemisphere, but albedo differences will be far more apparent than topographic shading. So I doubt that we are seeing any topography with respect to the "Great Bright Spot".

And Bjorn, it may well end up being the ejecta of a fresh impact crater, but I am just surprised there is no hint of rays extending from the spot, but you do see them from some of the other bright spots. It just makes me want to consider other posibilities, either the bright limb of an impact crater, like Umbriel's Wunda, or maybe it is a mountain, like the bright peaks of Callisto (but those are much smaller...). And there is the question of the dark patch next to it, which kind of reminds me of the dark ejecta around Oppia on Vesta.