In this Extra Detail Magnification (or "EDM", for short) of yesterday's APOD (a Contextual Frame obtained by the NASA - Dawn Spacecraft on August, 19, 2015), we can better see the Slopes and the Summit of a tall, totally unusually-looking and almost perfect "Conical Mountain" (which COULD have been a Volcano, eons and eons ago) 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). Now, if you look carefully at the top of the Mountain, you might notice (watch the shadows and the discernible Reliefs!) that the the Features (---> Rocky Objects) located up there are (or, at least, they SEEM to be) a multitude of large Rocky Blocks that crumbled on top of one another: a clear sign (in our humble opinion, as IPF) that the very top of this Conical Mountain of 1-Ceres might have collapsed on itself (something that usually happens to the Volcanoes which have this specific shape, after the occurrence of huge underground explosions or even the collapse of their Magma Chambers - perhaps due to significant Seismic Activities). In the Future, we hope that we might tell you something more but, and for now, that is it. The resolution of this frame is roughly 450 feet (such as about 137,16 meters) per pixel. This image (which is a crop taken from 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. |