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NASA Video Show Complex Surface of Asteroid Vesta

By Space.com via MSNBC

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI via MSNBC

This animation of Vesta is made from images taken with Dawn's framing camera. Many of the images were taken at different viewing angles to provide stereo for use in determining the topography. Other images were taken through special infrared and visible light filters in the camera. These infrared and visible light images have been combined and represented in colors that highlight the nature of the minerals on Vesta's surface. Green shows the amount of iron. Scientists have not yet determined the composition indicated by the other colors.

June 11, 2012 Updated Jun 11, 2012 at 8:59 AM PDT

A new video from a NASA spacecraft shows the huge asteroid Vesta's complex surface in dazzling and colorful detail.

The video drapes high-resolution false color images snapped by NASA's Dawn probe over a 3-D model of Vesta constructed from the spacecraft's observations. Dawn has been orbiting Vesta — at 330 miles wide the second-largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — since last July.

During its time at Vesta, Dawn has confirmed that the enormous space rock is actually an ancient protoplanet — a planetary building block left over from the solar system's earliest days. If Vesta had formed nearer to the sun instead of out in the asteroid belt near Jupiter, it may have been incorporated into a rocky planet like Earth or Venus.

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