If the modified terrain is an ejecta sheet, then where is the basin? It could be the feature marked in red (on a portion of the global map):

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(Edit: May not be a double ring due to Ceres' low mass.)

The complex crater prominent in image PIA19319 (first of recently released) is marked in purple.

The extent -- more or less -- of the ejecta sheet (or 'ejecta sheet') is marked in yellow.

Seemingly radial valleys are marked in white.

The map again, with no markings:

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Another view of the 'ejecta' region and complex crater:

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Since the 'ejecta sheet' is relatively pristine, we may soon see a large, beautifully preserved basin.

I reflected PIA19319 for that image (but not PIA19321) - compare it with the original version on the site.

They must have fixed it.

Here's the comparison between PIA19319 and PIA19321 as pulled from the Planetary Photojournal website.

Click to view attachment

That was quick! But you can still see the reversed version here.

the other day i did notice a issue with the jpg's and the tif's
they were upside down to each other
( like how fits images open from the BOTTOM and tif's from the top )

Yeah, the one on the main page is reversed but the version of the photo from the link is the correct orientation. Strange.

A third south polar view was just released:

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images...tml?id=PIA19322

This image is a composite of all three showing how they fit around the pole - this is only a rough alignment of images, not a map projection, and it's just to give an idea of coverage.

Phil

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Just sayin'....

Returning to the infamous SPOT 5 (3 spots). Very puzzling, but lots of zooms and upscaling later the scenario I imagine is the mound in the centre of the crater has somehow had two deep valleys gouged into opposite sides, exposing a brighter, presumably high ice content, sub surface below. The problem is I can't come up with a process or mechanism that would create such deep, but broad valleys. Possibly geysers venting from the side of the central mountain have carved the valleys, possibly a massive land slip along the lines of Mt St. Helens, erosion due to a melting pocket of ice maybe in the original impactor. I'm sure other plausible scenarios are available, these are just for starters.

EDIT: Maybe they are glaciers?

Once again drawing conclusions from images infuriatingly not quite at the required resolution is hazardous, but I thought I'd add my two pence worth.

reposting a image i posted on a different forum
on May4 dawn will get a good look at that spot

as it is spiraling into a LAMO from the HAMO

Any observation on 4 May will have nothing to do with LAMO/HAMO.

I don't recall having seen it explicitly stated that they'll take images during the downward spiralling, though I guess they could be valuable for navigation?

They do mention making observations on May 3-4, and I gather this continues in RC3 (a circular mapping orbit) that is above HAMO. I followed several status and journal links starting here:

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status.html

"Dawn will observe Ceres as it flies from 45 degrees to 35 degrees north latitude on May 3-4. Of course, the camera’s view will extend well north and south of the point immediately below it. (Imagine looking at a globe. Even though you are directly over one point, you can see a larger area.) The territory it will inspect will include those intriguing bright spots. The explorer will report back to Earth on May 4-5. It will perform the same observations between 5 degrees north and 5 degrees south on May 5-6 and transmit those findings on May 6-7. To complete its first global map, it will make another full set of measurements for a Cerean day as it glides between 35 degrees and 45 degrees south on May 7."

Even though the image releases has been limited, is there information (i.e. times) available on all images that have been acquired so far?

According to the table here, RC3 does indeed go all the way through 9 May, I forgot to check that detail. The e-mail from Christopher Russel included here mentions the possibility to get better photos of the brightest spots in May:

It's interesting to see the number of crater pairs. Similar size and shaped craters side by side.

Click to view attachment

The result of the presence of plenty of binaries in the main belt, presumably?

Asteroid binaries aren't restricted to radius ratios near unity.
I suspect this is more likely to just be the brain overestimating the statistical significance of some perceived correlation. If you're looking for crater pairs like that, you'll see them pretty much anywhere.

I thought so too for a second, then realised that the asteroid pairs would have to be very nearly equal size.

With that idea quickly put in the wastebasket I rather think we see quite a number of craters of this size since such asteroids are fairly common.
In the same image we also got some larger craters, which have obliterated a lot of other craters of all sizes, some even overlapping.

If it wasn't for that fact I guess one could have counted craters to reverse engineer what asteroids Ceres have swept up from the orbit it got in the asteroid belt. =)

Part of the IAU definition of a planet is that it sweeps its orbit clear (simplistically). Ceres does seem to have done an awful lot of sweeping. I thought it looked severely battered from the February images, but now we see its more crater than surface, especially in the polar regions. I wonder which post grad is going to get the short straw of cataloging them, a particular form of OCD might be required.

Given all the hype about water detection at Ceres prior to Dawn's arrival in orbit, I am surprised at the extent of cratering present on this dwarf planet. I expected it more perhaps to look like Jupiter's Europa rather tHan resembling Earth's moon.

Here my preliminary try to align projected versions:

Assuming the following globes for Dawn's Ceres images RC3 PIA19319.tif, PIA19321.tif, and PIA19322.tif


south-polar projected versions


longitude/latitude rectangular projected versions

(roughly consistent with the DLR RC2 map).

and north-polar projected versions:

Those are fantastic images we're getting now. Ceres looks like a mini-Moon

I have a humble request for you very talented people on this forum: could someone please use the recently-released colour map of Ceres in spherical projection, and overlay it on the images we receive, so that we would see the surface in its approximate true colours:

Click to view attachment

Thanks

It would indeed be nice to augment any newer hi-res black and white maps with color information from the enhanced false color map that has been released. However the color map is very much departed from true color and isn't a simple conversion.

BTW I'd be interested to add some of these latest maps to Science On A Sphere if that would be OK.

Here versions colorized with the map wildspace provided:



Since the color map is partially almost white, colors are saturated at those areas, with limited semantics.

You may use at least my maps under the same conditions the according pia images are provided.

Gerald's projections makes it is easier to see that the zig-zag linear features in or near the big crater that I noted earlier seem much more real now (RC2 to the right).




It also looks like this crater could be quite pretty in higher-resolution images (valleys? cliffs? varied terrain inside the crater? etc.).

New image is out, this one also it shows the previously mentioned big crater. Now, my compass orientation is getting mightily confused by the latest image releases, but I guess we're seeing the second big basin in this image, east of that other big one:

"It also looks like this crater could be quite pretty in higher-resolution images (valleys? cliffs? varied terrain inside the crater? etc.)."

All we need now is a few gullies!

Phil

There are gullies.

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The gully in the latest image is really interesting! Hopefully we can see some remnant of a cryovolcano at the head of it. Would certainly help in pinning down what they can look like.

The curving or otherwise non-linear nature of the valleys is intriguing.

Just as interesting -- and apparently associated with the valleys (?) -- is the widespread resurfacing with few craters. It does look like a fairly fresh ejecta sheet, but there doesn't seem to be a source basin nearby.

The rough patch of ground here ( from 1st of 4 recent images) almost appears as if it has been tilled.

Click to view attachment

Can't wait until the higher-res photos....

Now, that looks like an ejecta sheet to me. Why? Because, if you look closely, there are buried craters underneath this "tilled" terrain, ghost-like impressions of craters that seem to have formed a rugged surface like that which borders on the ejecta sheet, but has been filled in and covered by the ejecta. The contrast of fresh, well-formed craters to the ejecta sheet is obviously different from similarly sharp craters on the adjoining non-sheet-covered surface. The ejecta itself is grooved (the "tilling" effect) along the direction of flow, which seems to pile up in the side of the large crater that has been noted as looking as if the floor has a landslide in it.

Again, there are similar features on the near side of the Moon, including the Fra Mauro formation, which appear very similar, and which are ejecta sheets emplaced by basin-forming impacts. The similarities are so compelling to me that this is a no-brainer, I think.

-the other Doug

Again, what is the source of the ejecta? The imaging coverage isn't yet ideal, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious, fresh basin nearby. That one large basin was revealed today, but it seems to be pretty subdued to be a source for such fresh ejecta:

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Maybe it's the less than ideal lighting.

Interesting stuff nonetheless....

It's right next door to its basin (left edge)! And there is another much more subdued but even larger basin at top center in your cropped image. Besides, on a small object like Ceres basin ejecta can cover a hemisphere, it doesn't need to be that close.

Also, don't be taken in by the 'fresh' appearance of the ejecta. Look at the ejecta of Orientale on the Moon. Old but remarkably fresh-looking.

Phil

Same here, first I thought the rough patch was ejecta that had been thrown out at the impact, but looking at the part inside the crater I settled for the idea that it have moved into the crater, and might be in the process of filling it in at least partially.

Together with the gullies it appear that we spotted some of the processes I hoped we would find at Ceres, there might be more to come at higher resolution. =)

Holding steady at one image per day, RC3 image #5: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images...tml?id=PIA19536

Some interesting features in RC3-5 (PIA19536).

In red: possibly a fault line that has caused a ridge? Edit: appears to be a long fault line running up and right away from the ridge. Looks like the ridge cut off a small section of this longer fault as well.
In blue: possibly a gulley like feature? Edit: looking at this again, may be more likely related to what caused the large crater shortly before impact. A sort of grazing maybe?
Click to view attachment

I've been straining to interpret the stuff as ejecta and other impact effects, but some things seem 'off'.

- The 'tilled ground' seems to have an irregular or even patchy distribution. The edges appear abrupt in some cases. Ejecta usually grades into the surrounding terrain in a regular manner -- or so it seems/appears, at least.

- There are no obvious source basins for the ejecta/tilled ground. Nearby candidate craters/basins are either partially covered in the stuff, or appear too old or degraded. I was eagerly awaiting to see a dramatic basin on the image released on May 4, but instead was disappointed by a barely visible outline.

- The crater size distribution is odd. I would expect more small- and medium-sized craters on ejecta from a degraded basin.

- Speaking of crater size distribution, I'm still amazed by the number of large craters around the south pole. What 'happened' to all the smaller ones (that seem to 'prefer' the north pole)?

- The curved valleys are a surprise. I would expect straight valleys (grabens or crater chains) on a primitive body like Ceres. Slumping causes curved grabens, but that doesn't seem to be in play here. My eyes even see 'spiral' patterns of valleys surrounding a couple basins, but more imagery is needed to address that....

- I look forward to more puzzling questions in the coming days, weeks and months....

I think you are on to something. My armchair guess is the large crater was first and a second oblique impact (blue oval) came in and blew out the crater wall and sent the ejecta curtain over the far side of the crater. Many oblique impacts can make lateral butterfly ejecta patterns, but hitting/digging out the crater wall is a unique scenario and might allow for a larger downstream ejecta curtain.

On second thought, the 'tilled' surface inside the crater may not necessarily be related to the surrounding 'tilled ground'.

The outer area could be ejecta, while the inner stuff could have resulted from a slide of the crater rim:

Click to view attachment

The textures of the two area happen to be similar in appearance -- at least at the current resolution.

New image: PIA19538: Dawn RC3 Image 6

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19538

The terrain on the left reminds me of Mars.

Is that a big central peak peering over the limb at left, or something else?



P

It could be the thing circled in yellow:

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A new image from RC3 has been released, and we are still in the same general area as several other previously released RC3 images. I hope we get new sceneries soon (the flat crater, the other bright spots etc.).

According to their Facebook page, at this Saturday's "i C Ceres Space Science Festival, more images will be released. They're probably saving the best for then - I hope.

Now we got an image that shows mostly the dayside of Ceres. I think it includes at least two of the bright spot features (i.e. not spot(s) 5).

New image has 2 blotches - the blue one in particular looks like dust on the lens, cosmic ray or more intriguing a mini moon? (it has the same look as those comet 67P/CG blotches)

The red one at first glance looks like a normal peak shadow - except the dark to light aspect of it is reversed from all the other shadows around it (and it looks like fairly flat terrain - though one can't be at all sure at this resolution and phase angle). Maybe another mini moon candidate, or a hole?

Click to view attachment

The red circled area looks like a barely resolved deep crater/sunken hole to me with the lower section black and in shadow and a very slight highlight just above it. The blue area is somewhat intriguing though. I would expect to see some sort of highlight on the lowest pixel if it were an orbiting object but it could just not have any angles reflecting toward the camera. Most likely noise though.

World Ceres!