You don't actually think they're showing us what NASA has to work with, do you? I have a leaked photo of one of the REAL Ceres photos here - just a tad better than what they let US see...
4500 miles and a resolution of 700m per pixel?!
spy satellites from the early 70s could take pictures from 22,000 miles and had a resolution of < 1m per pixel. ONE METER.
40 year old tech was 490,000x (700x700) better?!
reference: http://www.space.com/12996-secret-spy-satellites-declassified-nro.html
That spy satellite only had 22000 miles to travel, 22000 miles to transmit data back, and only had a couple of years to live.
Dawn has to travel hundreds of millions of miles, has multiple destinations to go to and orbit, and has to transmit its findings up to ~360 million miles back to earth.
Furthermore the imaging systems on Dawn need to take care of multiple roles. Spy satellites have but one job: image minute detail from just one focal distance: 22000 miles.
Rocket science ain’t easy
You don't actually think they're showing us what NASA has to work with, do you? I have a leaked photo of one of the REAL Ceres photos here - just a tad better than what they let US see...