Taking the Temperature of Vesta's Tarpeia Crater

With less than three weeks to go until its 1-year anniversary around the giant asteroid Vesta, the NASA Dawn spacecraft is continuing to contribute extensively to furthering our understanding of the space rock. Recently, it has produced a series of temperature readings covering a crater on Vesta.

The landscape feature, called the Tarpeia Crater, is located close to the asteroid's south pole, and apparently exhibits significant variations in temperature. In the image above, the brightest colors represent the warmest temperatures, while darker colors the coolest.

This study was made possible by the visible and infrared mapping spectrometer aboard Dawn. The device was able to determine that the lowest temperature inside the crater is below minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 100 degrees Celsius).

The warmest location inside the crater is a balmy minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius), which means that humans could survive there wearing nothing more than heavy winter clothing, provided breathable air was available.

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Via: Taking the Temperature of Vesta's Tarpeia Crater