Today's APOD is an Extra Detail Magnification (or "EDM", for short) obtained from yesterday's beautiful Contextual Image (or "CTX Frame", for short) of the Dwarf Planet 1-Ceres, taken by the NASA - Dawn Spacecraft on January, 3rd, 2016, which showed us a small portion of the North-Western Rim of Fejokoo Crater. Just out of curiosity, the Crater's Rim is not circular and varies in steepness around its whole perimeter. This EDM shows, in great detail, some small, bright Features (actually, Striations, visible at about 10 o'clock of the frame) located on the Inner Slopes of the Crater. Fejokoo Crater was so named after a Nigerian God which is to have supplied yams (---> the edible starchy tuber of a climbing plant, widely distributed in Tropical and Sub-Tropical Countries). This Original Frame was centered at about 32,1° North Latitude and 312,8° East Longitude. The NASA - Dawn Spacecraft captured the scene during its Low-Altitude Mapping Orbit (or "LAMO", for short), from an approx. altitude of 234 miles (such as about 376,585 Km) above the Surface of 1-Ceres. The Image Resolution is roughly 115 feet (i.e. about 35,052 meters) per pixel (---> Picture Element). This image (which is a crop taken from an Original NASA - Dawn Spacecraft's b/w and NON Map-Projected frame published on the NASA - Planetary Photojournal with the ID n. PIA 20384 - DAWN LAMO Image n. 30) 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. |