English: PIA20351: Color Map of Ceres (Elliptical Projection)

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20351

This global map shows the surface of Ceres in enhanced color, encompassing infrared wavelengths beyond human visual range. Images taken using infrared (965 nanometers), green (555 nanometers) and blue (438 nanometers) spectral filters were combined to create this view.

This type of map is known as an elliptical, or Mollweide, projection and has a resolution of 460 feet (140 meters) per pixel. Some areas near the poles are black where Dawn's color imaging coverage is incomplete. The images used to make this map were taken from Dawn's high-altitude mapping orbit (HAMO), at a distance of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers) from Ceres.

Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgments, see http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission.

For more information about the Dawn mission, visit http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Photojournal Note: Also available is the full resolution TIFF file PIA20351_full.tif. This file may be too large to view from a browser; it can be downloaded onto your desktop by right-clicking on the previous link and viewed with image viewing software.