Sit back and take in the view. You can see a new world coming into focus right before your eyes. The bright white spot, the origin of which is still unknown, stands out clearly, while dozens of craters lie at the limit of resolution. The new photos are 30 percent clearer than those taken with the Hubble in 2003 and 2004. Nothing like driving to the seen instead of staring at it from afar with a long lens.
We looked at Ceres only a week ago when Dawn was 91,000 miles farther out. While I'm not quite ready to sing the lyrics to the Jimmy Cliff song "I Can See Clearly Now", it's certainly a better picture.
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Speaking of things that spin, check out the radar movie made from images taken during yesterday's flyby of asteroid 2004 BL86 by NASA's Goldstone Radar facility in California. Wow, it has a moon! 2004 BL86 measures about 1,100 feet (325 meters) across while its moon is approximately 230 feet (70 meters) across.
Asteroid 2004 BL86 buzzes Earth as it crosses through Cancer last night. Time lapse by John Chumack One interesting oddity. The moon appears to be revolving in an orbit perpendicular to that of the main body. Many moons orbit in or near the plane of the equator. Perhaps it's an artifact of processing images created by radar pings. For more on the discovery, click HERE .
