NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA

This image mosaic synthesizes some of the best views that NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained during more than a year in orbit around the asteroid Vesta. A towering mountain, rising more than twice the height of Mount Everest, sticks out from the south pole at the bottom of the image. A chain of three craters known as the "Snowman" can be seen at top left.

NASA's Dawn mission is saying Hasta la Vesta with a series of parting shots showing the asteroid Vesta, unveiled as the probe hightails it for the dwarf planet Ceres, the next stop on its eight-year, 3-billion-mile (5-billion-kilometer) itinerary.

The newly released pictures were taken as the Dawn probe wound down more than a year's worth of observations while in orbit around Vesta, an acorn-shaped world in the main asteroid belt. Dawn's $466 million mission was launched in 2007 and is aimed at studying the composition of Vesta as well as Ceres, two huge asteroids that are thought to preserve a record of the solar system's earliest days.

Dawn's data showed that Vesta has a chemically complex surface and an iron core. Based on its scars, the protoplanet appears to have suffered a mighty cosmic impact not just once, but twice in the past couple of billion years.

If it weren't for Jupiter's disruptive gravitational influence, Vesta might well have grown to become a major planet. "We can now say with certainty that Vesta resembles a small planet more closely than a typical asteroid," UCLA's Christopher Russell, the mission's principal investigator, said last month.

Dawn officially left Vesta's orbit during the night of Sept. 4-5, and its ion propulsion drive is gently pushing the probe toward a rendezvous with Ceres in 2015. Russell and his colleagues said today's images represent the last routine daily delivery from the mission during the three-year cruise, although other images may be highlighted as fresh findings are made.

"Dawn has peeled back the veil on some of the mysteries surrounding Vesta, but we're still working hard on more analysis," Russell said in today's news release. "So while Vesta is now out of sight, it will not be out of mind."

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA

An elevation map from NASA's Dawn probe shows the topography of the northern and southern hemispheres of Vesta, updated with readings gathered during Dawn's last look back. Colors represent distance relative to Vesta's center, with lows in violet and highs in red.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA

This image from NASA's Dawn mission, released Sept. 10, shows a shadowy view of the asteroid Vesta's northern hemisphere, using pictures obtained during Dawn's last look back. The mosaic is composed of five images obtained by Dawn's framing camera on Aug. 26, while the probe was at an altitude of 4,000 miles (6,000 kilometers).

Researchers expect to see a markedly different world when Dawn gets to Ceres. Unlike 330-mile-wide (530-kilometer-wide) Vesta, 583-mile-wide (940-kilometer-wide) Ceres is so massive that its gravity has crushed the world into a basically spherical shape — which is why the International Astronomical Union classifies it as a dwarf planet. Ceres has a differentiated crust, icy mantle and core, and may have a higher water content than Earth.

"Almost everything we see at Ceres will be a surprise, and totally different from Vesta," Russell said last week.

Months after Dawn's arrival at Ceres, NASA's New Horizons probe will fly by my favorite dwarf planet, Pluto, and its brood of moons. How will Ceres and Pluto compare? Will we see polar frost caps on Ceres? Ice volcanoes on Pluto? Stay tuned for 2015, the year of the dwarf planets.

More about Vesta and the dwarfs:

• Vesta is a protoplanet, scientists say
• Flash interactive: The new solar system
• Take a tour of five dwarf planets
• Pluto debate is about more than just one little world

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

G. Neukum / FU Berlin / DLR / ESA

A stereo image from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter, based on data acquired in 2004, shows the shield volcano known as Tharsis Tholus. Use red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect.

NASA's 3-D video of the asteroid Vesta is a stunner, but there are other places you can go in the solar system using red-blue glasses.

Take Mars, for example: Last month the European Space Agency released pictures of the semi-gigantic Tharsis Tholus volcano, which rises 5 miles (8 kilometers) above the Martian surface and spans 75 miles.

G. Neukum / FU Berlin / DLR / ESA

This image of the 5-mile-high Martian shield volcano known as Tharsis Tholus is color-coded to reflect elevation. The lowest elevations are in green, violet and purple. The highest elevations are in red and brown.

It's no Olympus Mons, which is 16 miles high and as big as the state of Arizona, but it's big nevertheless.

The stereo image from ESA's Mars Express orbiter looks right down the wide throat of Tharsis Tholus' caldera. ESA notes that at least two sections have collapsed around the volcano's eastern and western flanks during 4 billion years of geological history, leaving behind scarps that are several miles high.

The color-coded elevation map at right provides another way to get a sense of the terrain, but you can't beat 3-D glasses for giving you the sense that you're hanging right over the caldera's 20-mile-wide maw.

Stuart Atkinson, an educator and amateur astronomer from Britain, has mastered the trick of producing 3-D imagery from NASA's Opportunity rover on Mars, and he regularly posts pictures to his "Road to Endeavour" website. In last week's status report on Opportunity's progress, Atkinson shared several red-blues, including the vista shown below.

S. Atkinson / NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell

Ridges rise up in this Martian vista, seen by NASA's Opportunity rover as it studies Endeavour Crater.

Here's what Atkinson says about the picture:

"Just imagine you’re there. ... Imagine you’re slogging up that ridge in your heavy, bulky spacesuit, with your ragged, exhausted breathing rasping in your helmet. ... Eventually you reach the top of the ridge and pause for breath, hands on your knees, bent over. ... When you look up you find yourself looking down at the floor of Endeavour, at the dark dust dunes rippled across it, at the waves of wind wafting gently over it. ... Then you lift your eyes and see, on the far side of the great crater, the eastern hills, shining orange and gold in the sunlight. ...

"People will actually do that for real one day.

"How I envy them."

Me too.

Mercury was another target for stereo pictures, this time taken by NASA's Messenger probe. The picture below is a red-blue combination showing the floor of 19-mile-wide Kertesz Crater. Messenger acquired the image data in July, but the photo was released last month. The floor of the crater is covered with the "hollows" that made headlines during a recent Messenger science briefing, and the 3-D effect gives the imagery an extra dimension.

NASA / JHUAPL / CIW

This is an anaglyph created from two images of Mercury's Kertesz Crater. Use red-blue glasses to see the 3-D effect. With this anaglyph, better results may be achieved by tilting the head slightly to the left.

How to see in 3-D
By now you're probably wondering where to get the red-blue glasses you need to see the 3-D effect. Inexpensive cardboard spectacles are generally inserted in 3-D books or DVD packages — but for the pictures that you see on this page and on most other websites, you'll want to make sure you have the red-blue (or red-cyan) filters rather than amber-blue or green-magenta filters.

The red-blue glasses may be available at novelty shops, and you can also order them online. Here's a list of vendors from NASA. In addition to the outlets on NASA's list, there's Amazon.com and 3DGlasses.net. NASA even provides instructions for making your own 3-D glasses.

Today I gave away free 3-D glasses to the first 10 folks to go to the Cosmic Log Facebook page and post a comment specifically asking for them.  Don't worry, there'll be another 3-D giveaway once I scrounge up some more of the cardboard glasses. The red-blue specs are provided courtesy of Microsoft Research, which includes 3-D imagery in its WorldWide Telescope astronomy software. (Microsoft and NBC Universal are partners in the msnbc.com joint venture.)

Once you have your glasses, click through these links to sample more 3-D goodies from outer space:

• Take a wild ride over Vesta in 3-D
• NASA's past and future in 3-D
• See the asteroid Vesta in 3-D
• See the ultimate space shot in 3-D
• Explore the 3-D depths of Mars
• Get a fresh 3-D look at Phobos
• See a Martian crater in 3-D
• See a Martian milestone in 3-D
• See the Martian arctic in 3-D
• See more depths of Mars in 3-D
• 3-D delights from Mars
• Still more from Mars in 3-D
• Go on a space mission in 3-D
• See the moon's marvels in 3-D
• Saturn's moons in 3-D
• More from outer space in 3-D
• Fly through a nebula in 3-D
• Cosmic Log's 3-D-O-Rama

Last updated 11:50 p.m. ET.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

The giant asteroid Vesta gets the all-around treatment in a new video from NASA's $466 million Dawn mission.

The two-minute visualization was created from imagery collected by the Dawn spacecraft's framing camera from a distance of about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers). The Dawn team used all that imagery to figure out exactly how Vesta rotated on its axis, relative to celestial north and south.

In today's video advisory, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the asteroid's prime meridian was defined using a 1,640-foot-wide (500-meter-wide) crater that they named "Claudia," after a prominent Roman vestal virgin from the second century B.C. Dawn's scientists decided that the craters they found on Vesta would be named after vestal virgins, who were the priestesses of the goddess Vesta in ancient Rome. Other features will be named for festivals and towns of the ancient Roman era.

The most prominent feature on Vesta is the huge circular depression at the asteroid's south pole, which is thought to have been created by a cosmic impact. The cliffs along the sides of the structure are several miles high, and a 9-mile-high (15-kilometer-high) mountain rises from the center. In the video above, you can hear Carol Raymond, the Dawn mission's deputy principal investigator, talk about the depression as well as Vesta's grooves and the "Snowman" crater chain.

Dawn is due to study Vesta from closer range over the next year, and then move on to a rendezvous with the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015. Speaking of Ceres, this weekend is a fine time to go out with binoculars or a telescope and see the biggest thing in the main asteroid belt.

More about asteroids and dwarf planets:

• Dawn spacecraft gets down to work at Vesta (in 3-D)
• Asteroid or planet? NASA may settle Vesta debate
• Meet the solar system's dwarf planets
• Interactive: The new solar system

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds. 

The team behind NASA’s Dawn probe has released a video showing the asteroid Vesta spinning in space with a mysterious shadowy spot on its surface. It's really just the beginning of a weeks-long stream of images climaxing with Dawn's rendezvous with Vesta next month.

Dawn has been en route to Vesta for almost four years, but the $357 million mission is just now starting to get good. When the 5.4-foot-long (1.6-meter-long) spacecraft enters orbit on July 16, it will mark the first time any spacecraft has come so close to an asteroid so big. Earlier probes have landed on smaller asteroids, during NASA's NEAR-Shoemaker mission to Eros in 2001 and Japan's Hayabusa sample-return mission to Itokawa, which ended last year. But with a mean diameter of 329 miles (529 kilometers), Vesta is so big that some astronomers have wondered whether it ought to be classified as a dwarf planet.)

In terms of mass, Vesta is second only to the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt. Dawn is due to spend a year studying Vesta, and then will move on to a rendezvous with Ceres in 2015.

Right now, Dawn is about 170,500 miles (274,400 kilometers) from Vesta and closing in at a speed of 370 mph (170 meters per second). The images released today roughly match the best pictures previously taken of the asteroid by the Hubble Space Telescope. Twenty pictures, taken for navigation purposes over the course of a half-hour on June 1, were assembled in sequence to create the video you see above. One of the most notable features is a dark spot that rolls across the field of view from left to right.

"Like strangers in a strange land, we're looking for familiar landmarks," the University of Maryland's Jian-Yang Li, a member of the Dawn science team, said in a news release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The shadowy spot is one of those — it appears to match a feature, known as 'Feature B,' from images of Vesta taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope."

The images also give you a sense of Vesta's irregular shape, which is due to a huge crater at the asteroid's south pole.

All these features will come into sharper focus in the weeks leading up to the rendezvous. NASA says it will be releasing images from Dawn's approach on a weekly basis, which should come as a relief to planetary scientists and space fans. For weeks they've been urging the Dawn team to release more such imagery, and now Vesta is finally ready for its close-up.

Update for 5:30 p.m. ET: I had Dawn's position with respect to Ceres and Vesta scrambled up for a little while, but now I have the correct current figures. 

More about asteroids and other worlds:

• Could life on Earth have come from Ceres?
• Vesta: Scientists find a protoplanet's guts
• Pallas: Protoplanet frozen in time
• Smorgasbord includes Vesta fiesta
• Interactive: The new solar system

You can connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. Also, give a look to "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.