Thursday, December 13, 2012

The Best'a Vesta: Orbital Imagery Captures Asteroid's Towering Peak: Scientific American Gallery

The Best'a Vesta: Orbital Imagery Captures Asteroid's Towering Peak: Scientific American Gallery:

"The asteroid Vesta does not qualify as a planet, not even a dwarf planet. But the giant asteroid has plenty to offer planetary scientists nonetheless.

Vesta appears to be a differentiated body, like Earth, with distinct layers of core, mantle and crust. It also features some pretty dramatic topography. This photomosaic of Vesta's south pole, from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, centers on one of the tallest mountains in the solar system. The central peak within the crater Rheasilvia rises 22 kilometers, comparable with Mars's Olympus Mons and much higher than any mountain on Earth."

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