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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Dawn spacecraft, a million kilometers away

Dawn spacecraft, a million kilometers away
Dawn spacecraft, a million kilometers away This blink animation consists of two 14-minute exposures. The faint speck that moves between the two images is the Dawn spacecraft, a million kilometers from Earth (about three times the Earth-Moon distance), and moving very fast. The telescope tracked Dawn during the long exposures, so the stars in the field of view form long and much brighter trails; the spacecraft glinted at only 20th magnitude at the time of the observation. Bill Dillon, Sierra Stars Observatory