Cratered Surface of Ceres in Motion

The surface of Ceres is covered with craters of many shapes and sizes, as seen in this new animation of a map of the dwarf planet’s surface. To make this animation, a map of Ceres, comprised of images captured by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 19, 2015 from a distance of nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers), was projected onto a globe. Ceres’ actual rotation is much slower; it takes about nine hours. An unusually large basin nearly 186 miles (300 kilometers) across is seen just south of the equator, wit