This enhanced color composite image, made with data from the framing camera aboard NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows the area around Ernutet crater. The bright red portions appear redder with respect to the rest of Ceres. In a 2017 study in the journal Science, researchers from the Dawn science team found that these red areas around Ernutet are associated with evidence of organic material.
Images taken using blue (440 nanometers), green (750 nanometers) and infrared (960 nanometers) spectral filters were combined to create the view.
Ernutet Crater measures about 32 miles (52 kilometers) in diameter and is located in the northern hemisphere. It can also be seen in PIA20570.
This image was published in a 2017 study in the journal Icarus.
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 mission participants, see http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission.For more information about the Dawn mission, visit http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov.
