Dwarf Planet Ceres Gets Another Unexplained Bright Spot
Volcano-like rupture, ice or Ceres Space Colony?
The latest images of dwarf planet Ceres reveal a second unexplained bright spot residing in the same basin as the first mysterious bright patch spied in previous images.
"Ceres' bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin,” said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, in a prepared statement. “This may be pointing to a volcano-like origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before we can make such geologic interpretations."
The images were captured by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers) from Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. The first bright patch was spotted when Dawn captured the sharpest images ever of the dwarf planet in January.
"The brightest spot continues to be too small to resolve with our camera, but despite its size it is brighter than anything else on Ceres.” said Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany. “This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us."
Dawn will enter orbit around Ceres, which rocks an average diameter of 590 miles (950 kilometers), on March where it will stay for 16 months as scientists study its surface.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Jenna Pitcher is a freelance journalist writing for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter.
