This is the best image we have of the dwarf planet Ceres.
It’s a mysterious place that we know little about. A year ago, however the Herschel Space Observatory discovered that it’s got a tenuous atmosphere of water vapor.
It’s now believed that there are cryovolcanoes blasting liquid water up out of the surface.
Could Ceres host an entire liquid ocean of water? What’s more - if there is liquid water, could there be life?
NASA’s Dawn mission will arrive soon. On January 20th they will release it’s first image of Ceres.
Dawn has now begun the approach to Ceres. It will enter orbit on March 6th.
By the end of the month Dawn’s images will be better than those of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Presently, there’s a large amount of speculation about what the “white spot’ on Ceres actually is. The Herschel Space Observatory’s cryovolcano may in fact be the white spot. If so this will be a prime location to search for some form of astrobiological activity.
The mission is getting more exciting - March can’t arrive soon enough.
This is officially the best image we’ve ever gotten of Ceres. From now on every image Dawn takes will then be the best image of Ceres ever taken until it’s finally in orbit. (Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)
Here’s the newest release of images compiled by NASA. We can now see that the mysterious white spot isn’t alone: there are many white spots on Ceres!
This is remarkable. Could these spots be ice deposits? Impact sites that resulted in interior material getting exposed?
We’re only going to continue learning more as Dawn gets closer to this alien world.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)
The images are growing sharper as NASA’s Dawn mission makes its final approach to Ceres. These images were taken from 52,000 miles away. Soon Dawn will arrive - March 6th.
(Image credit: NASA)
The images of Ceres continue to get better. The mysterious white spot is still too small to resolve exactly its nature but despite that, it’s by far the brightest thing on Ceres (and it has a sibling!).
“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. This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us.” said Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)
Unfortunately Tumblr won’t support this file size but NASA just released a great gif of a rotating Ceres. Here it is!
This so friggin cool.