Impressive Mountain Tops on Vesta

In this image of the south pole region of the asteroid Vesta, a mountain is rising approximately 9 miles (15 kilometers) above the floor of a crater. This mountain, which measures about 125 miles (200 kilometers) in diameter at its base, is one of the highest elevations on all known bodies with solid surfaces in the solar system.

The image has been recorded with the framing camera aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft from a distance of about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers). The image resolution is about 260 meters per pixel.

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn framing cameras were developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The Framing Camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR, and NASA/JPL.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA