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OrbitStudio / Ceres landmarks / Occator Crater

Occator Crater

The crater of Ceres's famous bright spots, on the dwarf planet in the asteroid belt. The spots are salt, left where brine reached the surface; the crater around them, 92 kilometers across and about 4 kilometers deep, is what a print shows.

Size92 km across, about 4 km deep
Coordinates19.82° N, 120.66° W
TypeImpact crater
AgeAbout 20 million years, by NASA's estimate
Named afterOccator, the Roman agricultural deity of harrowing; adopted by the IAU in 2015
Elevation sourceDawn shape model (JPL), 100 m grid

Size, coordinates and name from the IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature; the depth and the dome from NASA's Dawn image release; the salts, the brine and the age from NASA's summary of Dawn's findings. Coordinates are the center point OrbitStudio uses for this destination.

Where is Occator on Ceres?

Occator is centered at 19.82° north, 120.66° west, on Hanami Planum, a high plain in the northern hemisphere. The gazetteer gives its longitude as 239.34° east. The International Astronomical Union named it in 2015 after Occator, the Roman god of harrowing, in keeping with the rule that Ceres's craters take the names of gods and goddesses of agriculture and vegetation. Inside it, the dome in its central pit is Cerealia Tholus, 3.2 kilometers across, which has an entry of its own.

What are the bright spots in Occator?

Salt. Dawn found that the bright deposits are made mostly of sodium carbonate, left where salty water rose from a reservoir about 40 kilometers below the surface and evaporated. The brightest, Cerealia Facula, lies in the center around the dome; the smaller patches elsewhere on the floor are Vinalia Faculae. NASA puts the impact that made the crater at about 20 million years ago, and some of the bright deposits at less than 2 million.

In a print they do not show. They are brighter than the ground around them, not higher, and a model is made from heights alone.

What does Occator look like as a 3D print?

A deep bowl with a small dome in its middle. Its entry frames about 120 kilometers, so on a model 200 millimeters across the relief in that view comes out at about 10 millimeters at true scale and about 20 at 2x. The crater fills most of the view, and the dome, 3.2 kilometers across, is a bump about 5 millimeters wide on the floor.

Print Occator in OrbitStudio Watch how it works · 1:12

What is OrbitStudio?

OrbitStudio turns real elevation data into 3D-printable models. You pick a region of Ceres on a globe or a flat map, choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament, and get ready-to-print files with terrain and borders already separated and colored. No CAD, no mesh repair. The heights come from the shape model NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory made from Dawn's images, on a 100-meter grid.

Trying it is free and needs no account: pick a region, generate it and turn it around in 3D. Downloading the model — STL files and pre-colored 3MF files for Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer — takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass. The generator covers the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Pluto and Charon too.

Other landmarks

Ahuna Mons Haulani Kerwan All Ceres landmarks

The night sky, too

OrbitStudio Sky, the night-sky tool, turns the sky over any place, on any date from 1900 to 2100, into a 3D-printable star map. Its STL is free.