NASA DAWN View of Asteroid Vesta

As NASA's Dawn spacecraft travels to its next destination, this mosaic synthesizes some of the best views the spacecraft had of the giant asteroid Vesta. 

Dawn studied Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012. 

The towering mountain at the south pole - more than twice the height of Mount Everest - is visible at the bottom of the image. 

The set of three craters known as the "snowman" can be seen at the top left.

These images are the last in Dawn's Image of the Day series during the cruise to Dawn's second destination, Ceres. A full set of Dawn data is being archived at http://pds.nasa.gov/ .

Read more: Dawn Reality-Checks Telescope Studies of Asteroids

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCAL/MPS/DLR/IDA