The eye of Ceres

Processed animation (JPL PIA19167). The Dawn spacecraft observed Ceres for an hour on January 13, 2015, from 383,000 kilometers. Ceres is comparable in size with the minor axis of Texas. A bit more than half its surface was observed at a resolution of 27 pixels [NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI].

The hour-long animation of 1 Ceres, using 20 images from the Framing Camera on-board Dawn and released by JPL a few days ago was greatly appreciated, anxious as we are to see both Ceres and, Pluto in the weeks ahead. 

And though it's very rare for the Pioneers to drift focus away from Earth's Moon, we were asked to "steady" the animation, and for convenience sake we decided to proceed with publishing it here.

The "white spot," tracking across the 27 pixel-wide disk, continues to intrigue.