
with Dawn’s adventures in the asteroid field entering month five, amazing images and videos continue to arrive from deep space. first it was a close up view of Vesta, then a 3D tour of the asteroid, and now NASA have released these beautiful images of rocks from Vesta – found right here on earth



main image: a thin slice of the GRA98108 HED meteorite viewed through a polarising microscope. the HED (howardite, eucrite and diogenite) meteorites are a large group of meteorites believed to originate from Vesta, a hypothesis that is consistent with current Dawn observations. found in Antarctica, this one comes from deep inside Vesta and consists of roughly equal portions of pyroxene and the much brighter colored olivine, a silica-poor iron magnesium-iron silicate
credit: Hap McSween (University of Tennessee), and Andrew Beck and Tim McCoy (Smithsonian Institution)
top image: these two eucrites are crystallized lavas that have the composition of basalt, the most common lava type on the Earth. QUE97053 (left) consists mostly of elongated gray crystals of feldspar (calcium aluminum silicate) and brightly colored grains of pyroxene (magnesium iron silicate). EET90020 (right) has similar mineralogy but a recrystallized texture of equant grains formed by later heating
credit: Hap McSween (University of Tennessee), and Andrew Beck and Tim McCoy (Smithsonian Institution)
middle image: detail from QUE97053
credit: Hap McSween (University of Tennessee), and Andrew Beck and Tim McCoy (Smithsonian Institution)
lower image: detail of QUE99050 and GRA98108
credit: Hap McSween (University of Tennessee), and Andrew Beck and Tim McCoy (Smithsonian Institution)
click here for higher res versions and more meteorites from Vesta


















































