This set of images from NASA's Dawn mission shows topography of the southern hemisphere of the giant asteroid Vesta and a map of Vesta's gravity variations that have been adjusted to account for Vesta's shape. The shaded relief map on the left shows the outlines of the two ancient basins, Rheasilvia and Veneneia. On the right is a map of the residual gravity field created by removing the gravity due to the hills and valleys within the crustal layer, revealing the signature of variations in density.
Red shows the strongest gravitational pull in this scheme, measured in milligal units, and dark blue shows the weakest. Milligals are a unit of acceleration due to gravity. The large central peak of the Rheasilvia basin, which appears as the yellow area just above and to the left of center, has a small positive residual gravity anomaly. This indicates the crust there is denser, coming from deeper within the body, or perhaps is less fractured. The gravity lows near the basin rim on the right, shown in dark blue, likely indicate rock that is lighter as a result of being pulverized by the two impacts.
The topography model is derived from framing camera images from Dawn's high-altitude mapping orbit (420 miles or 680 kilometers above the surface) and the gravity data come from the low-altitude mapping orbit (130 miles or 210 kilometers above the surface).
This video from NASA's Dawn mission shows that the gravity field of Vesta closely matches the surface topography of the giant asteroid Vesta. The video shows shaded topography from Dawn's framing camera on the left, with troughs and craters visible, and color-contoured data from Dawn's gravity experiment on the right. Red shows the areas with a higher than average gravity field and blue-purple shows the areas where the field is weaker on average. The highest topography, on the rim of the Rheasilvia basin deep in the southern hemisphere, shows a particularly strong gravity field. The dashed line indicates the north-south axis.
The topography model is derived from framing camera images from Dawn's high-altitude mapping orbit (420 miles or 680 kilometers above the surface), and the gravity data come from the low-altitude mapping orbit (130 miles or 210 kilometers above the surface).
Vesta takes approximately 5.34 hours to make a rotation.
Map credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA; video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
No comments:
Post a Comment