Skip Navigation

Resources

Fresh Crater with Bright and Dark Rays

Fresh Crater with Bright and Dark Rays
Photojournal: PIA15045
Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Published: November 11, 2011
This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows a small, young, fresh crater on asteroid Vesta with bright and dark rays extending from it.

ENLARGE

Related

This 1981 Voyager 2 image shows the vast Saturn ring system, as well as three small icy satellites and the shadow of a fourth. Saturn is the second largest planet in the Solar System. It has a vol...
More
Saturn, Rings, Moons
Saturn, Rings, Moons
Although difficult to see at first, more than one moon is at work sculpting Saturn's rings in this view from the Cassini spacecraft. Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) is more or less...
More
Saturn's ring
Two Sculptors
This image, taken on June 7, 2015 by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows a portion of the southern hemisphere of Ceres from an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers). The crater at the lower left is ...
More
Dawn Survey Orbit Image 48
Dawn Survey Orbit Image 48
: This mosaic combines views captured by Cassini as it made the first dive of the mission's Grand Finale on April 26, 2017, and shows details in bands and swirls in the atmosphere.
More
Images and video that show how Cassini's cameras captured a large swatch of Saturn's cloud tops.
Cassini Noodle Mosaic of Saturn
NASA's Cassini spacecraft looks towards the dark side of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, capturing the blue halo caused by a haze layer that hovers high in the moon's atmosphere.
More
Titan
The Halo
The effects of the moon Prometheus create intricate formations in Saturn's thin F ring. The gravity of potato-shaped Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) periodically creates streamer-ch...
More
Saturn's F ring
Prometheus' Trail
The Cassini spacecraft looks through Titan's thick atmosphere to reveal bright and dark terrains on the Saturn-facing side of the planet's largest moon. North is up. The image was taken with the ...
More
Titan
Saturn's View of Titan
Bright spokes grace Saturn's B ring in this Cassini spacecraft snapshot that also features a couple of the planet's moons large and small. Dione (1,123 kilometers, or 698 miles across) can be seen...
More
Bright spokes on Saturn's B ring, Dione and Pandora
Spoke Embellishment
On New Year's Eve 2004, Cassini flew past Saturn's intriguing moon Iapetus, capturing the four visible light images that were put together to form this global view.
More
On New Year's Eve 2004, Cassini flew past Saturn's intriguing moon Iapetus, capturing the four visible light images that were put together to form this global view.
Encountering Iapetus
This image mosaic of Vesta's south pole is generated from dozens of individual images from the framing camera aboard NASA's Dawn spacecraft. This view is centered on the asteroid's south pole, whic...
More
Map of Vesta's South Pole
Map of Vesta's South Pole
+ View Full Res This image was obtained by Cassini's radar instrument during a flyby on Aug. 25, 2009. The radar antenna was pointing toward Titan at an altitude of 970 kilometers (603 miles) duri...
More
Titan
Titan Radar Swath (T-61 Flyby - Aug. 25, 2009)
This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows craters with both sharp and smooth rims, a 'ghost' crater and dark and bright material in asteroid Vesta's southern hemisphere.
More
Unusual Craters on Vesta IV
Unusual Craters on Vesta IV
Pan is nearly lost within Saturn's rings in this view that captures a small section of the rings from just above the ringplane. Pan (28 kilometers, or 17 miles across) appears a small bright dot o...
More
Saturn's rings
Lost Among Rings
What looks like a pair of Saturnian satellites is actually a trio upon close inspection.
More
What looks like a pair of Saturnian satellites is actually a trio upon close inspection.
Triple Play
The small moon Janus is almost hidden between the planet's rings and the larger moon Rhea.
More
The small moon Janus is almost hidden between the planet's rings and the larger moon Rhea.
Hidden Janus
The low Sun elevation in this scene emphasizes the topography of Van Eyck crater.
More
Detailed view of impact crater.
Van Eyck and the Formation
This view from NASA's Dawn spacecraft taken on May 29, 2016, shows the southern rim of Gaue Crater on Ceres.
More
Dawn LAMO Image 161
Dawn LAMO Image 161
From a distant perspective, the Cassini spacecraft sees hints of the unusual surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, a moon where new terrain is created around a geologically active south polar region....
More
From a distant perspective, the Cassini spacecraft sees hints of the unusual surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, a moon where new terrain is created around a geologically active south polar region.
Crescent of Changing Terrain
Waves and Curls August 24, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06461 An interesting curl in the boundary of a dark polar collar, an area where the brig...
More
Waves and Curls
Waves and Curls
Seen here is the end result of the process that occurs every time the moon Prometheus closely approaches Saturn's F ring. The moon cuts a dark channel in the ring's inner edge that then shears out ...
More
Saturn's F ring
Gores in the Strands
This mosaic from the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer camera on the European Space Agency's Huygens probe combines 17 image triplets, projected from an altitude of 800 meters (2,625 feet). The ar...
More
A mosaic of Titan's surface
Huygens Titan Mosaic #2
A serene orb of ice is set against the gentle pastel clouds of giant Saturn. Rhea transits the face of the gas giant, whose darkened rings and their planet-hugging shadows appear near upper right. ...
More
Rhea and Saturn
Orb of Ice
This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows a portion of the southern hemisphere of dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The image was taken on Sept. 20, 2015...
More
Dawn HAMO Image 40
Dawn HAMO Image 40
+ View Full Res This raw, unprocessed image of Saturn's moon Enceladus was taken on Oct. 19, 2011. As the spacecraft passed Enceladus, its infrared instruments, cameras and other instruments moni...
More
Enceladus
Enceladus Flyby E-15 (Raw Image #4)
Summer is slowly coming to Saturn's northern hemisphere. The north pole, which was in the midst of a seven-year-long winter when Cassini arrived in 2004, is now seen basking in the sunlight of mid...
More
Saturn's northern hemisphere
Summer is Coming!

You Might Also Like