Ceres Topographic Globe Animation - HD

This animation shows a color-coded map from NASA's Dawn mission revealing the highs and lows of topography on the surface of dwarf planet Ceres.

The color scale extends 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) below the surface in purple to 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) above the surface in brown. The brightest features (those appearing nearly white) -- including the well-known bright spots within a crater in the northern hemisphere -- are simply reflective areas, and do not represent elevation.

The topographic map was constructed from analyzing images from Dawn's framing camera taken from varying sun and viewing angles. The map was combined with an image mosaic of Ceres and projected onto a 3-D shape model of the dwarf planet to create the animation.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech