HONG KONG: NASA has shared its newest photos taken by Dawn of Ceres which lies between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt.
“We know so much about the solar system and yet so little about dwarf planet Ceres,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director, in a press release. “Now, Dawn is ready to change that.”
Dawn was launched into space to conduct a 16-month study of Ceres and will be taking higher resolution pictures of the dwarf planet as it gets closer.
The most recent images were taken by at 238,000 miles from Ceres on Jan. 13. The images Dawn captured are at about 80 percent the resolution of what a Hubble Space Telescope image would be.
The next set of images is expected to be released at the end of January and will be very clear, according to NASA.
“The team is very excited to examine the surface of Ceres in never-before-seen detail,” said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, in the press release. “We look forward to the surprises this mysterious world may bring.”
