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Topographical map of Ceres

Topographical map of Ceres
Topographical map of Ceres This topographical map of Ceres was made from Dawn’s stereo photos taken in the third mapping orbit. (For experts, the topography is referenced to an ellipsoid of 299.5 by 299.5 by 277.1 miles, or 482.0 by 482.0 by 446.0 kilometers.) The dwarf planet is 1.1 million square miles (2.8 million square kilometers). That’s about 36 percent of the land area of the contiguous United States, or the combined land areas of France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The map shows all the feature names approved so far by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). (We described the naming convention here.) As more features are named, this official list and map are kept up to date. (To avoid confusion, note that the topographical map here has the prime meridian on the left, but the IAU map has it in the middle.) The scales for horizontal distance in this figure apply at the equator. Rectangular maps like this distort distances at other latitudes. A similar version of this map is here. NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA