Science Art: False-Color Image Shows Proof of an Impact, by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft


Click to embiggen.

Right now, as I write these words, the spacecraft Dawn is circling around the asteroid Vesta, trying to figure out how it got there.

This is a “false-color” image – the red and the green show different materials, making the enormous crater in the middle of the photo that much more obvious. The reddish stuff underneath is what used to be in Vesta’s core until whatever slammed into it slammed into it. Basically, it’s asteroid guts.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

More on the picture (and other images and video from Vesta) can be found here.