(editor's note: Sunday afternoon (tomorrow 13 May) the Taurus Sun joins Jupiter (the sign of finance). Be on the look out for some positive signs of the beginning of our new worldwide financial stability.
While we're up in the sky, the asteroid Vesta continues to intrigue astonomers with it's many "earth-like" qualities.
I'm so happy to report that news of activities happening outside and around our planet continue to intrigue more and more people!
Just a few years ago, "space geeks" were the only ones interested in all the wonderous events of our neighboring planets, stars, and galaxies. Now it seems everyone has their eyes to the skies!
The view from down here is a special vantage point, so I hope you enjoy this report and get a better understanding of how important YOU are to the beautiful Cosmos we all call home.
~All my Love, Boo)
Asteroid Vesta Looks Like a Little Planet, Complete With Craters, Mountains and Landslides
"Vesta looks like a little planet. It has a beautiful surface, much more varied and diverse than we expected," said Russell, a professor in UCLA's Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Dawn mission's principal investigator. "We knew Vesta's surface had some variation in color, but we did not expect the diversity that we see or the clarity of the colors and textures, or their distinct boundaries. We didn't find gold on Vesta, but it is still a gold mine."
This colorized map from NASA's Dawn mission shows the distribution of minerals across the surface of Vesta. It was made from spectra –- data collected in different wavelengths of radiation –- obtained by Dawn's visible and infrared mapping spectrometer. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/INAF/MPS/DLR/IDA)
"Vesta has been recording the history of the solar system from the beginning," Russell said. "We are going back to the beginning of the solar system -- more than 4.5 billion years ago. We're going back further than ever before on the surface of a body."
New images and videos of Vesta are available at www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20120510.html.
