Asteroid Vesta's Coat of Many Colors

This animation based on data from NASA's Dawn spacecraft starts with high-resolution black and white images of the giant asteroid Vesta wrapped onto a 3-D shape model and transitions to false-color images.

The colors were chosen to highlight differences in surface composition that are too subtle for the human eye to see.

[nikolaoskavvadias]

Hi all
great visual; and audio too! Does anyone know the artist/name of the track?

[peppernickelly]

What various minerals are displayed in the various colors?

[Exadeful]

Vesta is one of the largest asteroids in the Solar System, with a mean diameter of about 525 kilometres.
Vesta is the second-most-massive asteroid after the dwarf planet Ceres, and comprises an estimated 9% of the mass of the asteroid belt.
Vesta is the brightest asteroid visible from Earth. Its maximum distance from the Sun is slightly farther than the minimum distance of Ceres from the Sun.
Vesta is the brightest asteroid visible from Earth.
- Very shortened En Wikipedia intro.

[Lastindependentthinker]

That was so cool I watched it twice... So can we mine that??

[peppernickelly]

With Vesta's surface analysed by Dawn we could compare the material in/around the impact craters with the known the types of asteroids and their abundance in space to get a better idea of which colors represent a particular material. If they tested their detectors on various meteorites on Earth in a vacuum then they should have an answer soon, which I'm sure they did a lot of testing. If I have some space questions who could I go to so I could get some answers, good complex answers?

[jiberish]

The spinning of the asteroid caused an optical illusion when those last words were displayed. :]

[jamescrawford]

After the animation stops, the letters continue to twirl from an optical illusion

[Viper]

This great rock would make a wonderful space station.

[AliceMarieM]

need more explanation of what we are looking at

[jjbuttcheese]

There is already a company getting geared up to do it :D

[Chuck]

That's the fanciest rock I've ever seen.