This video of the asteroid Vesta shows a shape model produced using high-altitude mapping by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft from about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) away.
The image collection was captured by Dawn’s framing camera to better understand the massive rock’s surface and the processes that shaped the second largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
A noticeable feature is the giant round depression at Vesta’s south pole, originally seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is several hundred miles across with cliffs several miles high, including a central mountain that reaches up to about 9 miles (15 kilometers). This is one of the highest elevations on known solid objects in our solar system.
Vesta is named after the Roman goddess of home and hearth.
The asteroid’s prime meridian, or zero-longitude, was pinpointed using a small crater called Claudia, christened after a Roman woman from the second century B.C.
As Dawn locates more new features, craters will be named after the goddess Vesta’s priestesses—the vestal virgins—and famous Roman women. Other structures will receive names of Roman towns and festivals.
