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  Vesta craters, marker foiblesMar 24, 2012 10:26 AM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:NASA recently released some nifty photos of large craters on the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta, taken by the Dawn probe, which has been orbiting it since last summer--Dawn snapped the photos in December and October of last year. Here is NASA's article with crater analysis. The crater in this first photo is about 9 km across, and the sharp edge around it means it's fairly young:
 
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image by NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA (source)
 
And another large crater:
 
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image by NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/UMD (source)
 
Dawn is due to leave Vesta this coming summer and proceed on to another giant asteroid, Ceres, which it should reach in early 2015.
 
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In case you wanted to see the gruesome details of the tortured genesis of an A* page, here's a breakdown of some key stages from today's hackery:
 
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It was looking pretty hairy for a while there. :P Notice that I'd forgotten her earring up to the end! I used the medium brush Multiliner for final touch-ups over the white ink (instead of keeping it in the cupboard, where all the other Multiliners have been relegated by the PITT pens for now) because its big soft tip is pretty darn good at brushing over the non-waterproof white ink without disturbing it, and without getting clogged up; tougher, more durable markers like the PITTs tend to dig into the white ink, AND get clogged up by it, and even an actual brush will carve into it a bit.
 
I did try some waterproof white Sharpie "water-based" "poster paint" pens today in the hopes that they'd provide a superior solution than the white ink, but their Sharpie applicators are pretty aggravating, with big hard tips that gush the paint out and then dig into the paper beneath it; also the paint, while supposedly archival and non-toxic, is bound to have more noxious chemicals in it than the white ink. Oh and it doesn't dry as fast as the ink. So I guess I'll stick with the ink for now--I *do* have fun smudging it around with my fingers.
 
 
 
 
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