Goodbye Vesta

Posted in Astronomy at 20:03 on 24 September 2012

The Dawn spacecraft has now left Vesta, leaving us with this image, a composite of the best pictures it took of the asteroid. (Picture from Astronomy Picture of the Day 19/9/12.)

Vesta manages to look a bit like a large potato. A 500 kilometre across potato, though. The large mountain towards the bottom of the picture is twice the height of Mount Everest.

Dawn is now on its way to the only asteroid bigger than Vesta. It’s due to reach its target, Ceres, in 2015.