Astronomy Picture of the Day
August 26, 2015

The 'Conical Mountain' of 1-Ceres (CTX Frame)
The 'Conical Mountain' of 1-Ceres (CTX Frame)

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA and Dr Paolo C. Fienga for the additional process. and color.

This absolutely fascinating image of a (relatively) large portion of the Surface of the Dwarf-Planet known as 1-Ceres, was taken by the NASA - Dawn Spacecraft on August, 19, 2015, and its shows us a tall, totally unusually-looking and almost perfect "Conical Mountain" (which COULD have been a Volcano, eons and eons ago - even though, and assuming that we are actually looking at an extremely ancient Volcanic Edifice, the Central Crater, or Patera, that is located at its Summit, is not very well discernible yet) from a distance of about 915 miles (such as approx. 1472,5461 Km).


The Conical Mountain, located in the Southern Hemisphere of 1-Ceres, stands about 4 miles (approx. 6,437 Km) high. Its perimeter is very sharply defined, with almost no accumulated Debris at the base of the highly illuminated West-facing Streaked Slope which, furthermore, is characterized by the presence of very bright Streaks (whose origin is so far, of course, still unknown - but we, as IPF, would like to speculate that the bright Streaks could be made of Vitrified Rocks and Sand).


The resolution of this frame is roughly 450 feet (such as about 137,16 meters) per pixel.


This image (which is an Original NASA - Dawn Spacecraft's b/w and NON Map-Projected contextual frame published on the NASA - Planetary Photojournal with the ID n. PIA 19631) has been additionally processed, extra-magnified to aid the visibility of the details, contrast enhanced and sharpened, Gamma corrected and then colorized (according to an educated guess carried out by Dr Paolo C. Fienga-LXTT-IPF) in Absolute Natural Colors (such as the colors that a normal human eye would actually perceive if someone were onboard the NASA - Dawn Spacecraft and then looked ahead, towards the Surface of 1-Ceres), by using an original technique created - and, in time, dramatically improved - by the Lunar Explorer Italia Team.



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