This article originally appeared on Paul Schenk's blog and is reposted here with permission.

It's begun! Dawn is on approach to Ceres, the largest of the asteroids, and is starting to resolve features. We have now seen two sets of images, one on January 11 the other on January 26. Indistinct curved marking and subtle shadings are apparent. Some markings look like craters, others like fracture or fault scarps. The fact that these features are not obvious at this point is intriguing. Perhaps they will prove to be like features we are familiar with on icy satellites of Saturn, the objects most similar to Ceres in size and composition. Perhaps not.

The best Ceres images from January are at best ~20-22 kilometers resolution. Lots of features are hidden to us at this scale. Nonetheless here is a reprojected version one of the new images, one unmarked, the other marked by what appear to be scarps or topographic features, all of which at this point seem to suggest a chain of craters or an elongate trough. We should know by mid-February whether that is correct.