With the Dawn spacecraft getting ever closer to the dwarf planet Ceres, the quality of imagery taken is significantly improving. These latest images, taken on the 12th February at a distance of 83,000 kilometres (or 52,000 miles) from Ceres, give a sharper image of the cratered surface of the dwarf planet.
The bright spots that have been questioned ever since the first images were received are still not clear as to what they are. However, ideas of ice volcanoes or geysers are becoming less likely, although cannot be completely ruled out. What seems to be the most likely reason for the apparent brightness of those regions is ice. Perhaps they are particularly deep craters, hence are colder than the others around them and so ice forms more easily. But this is just speculation, and the answers will be known once the Dawn spacecraft is orbiting Ceres. With orbital insertion expected on the 6th March, we won’t be waiting long!
This heavily cratered world is reminiscent of icy moons, such as Saturn’s moon Tethys and Uranus’ moon Umbriel. Indeed, the cratered nature of Ceres also weakens the argument for a subsurface liquid water ocean that some scientists had speculated could be beneath the surface of Ceres, as the two moons with liquid oceans in our Solar System are Europa and Enceladus, both of which have very sparse cratering.
So all in all, these images have revealed more about Ceres than ever before, but have yet to truly answer the killer questions. More images are expected to be released in the coming weeks ahead of orbital insertion on the 6th March, and hopefully questions will finally be answered.
The bright spots that have been questioned ever since the first images were received are still not clear as to what they are. However, ideas of ice volcanoes or geysers are becoming less likely, although cannot be completely ruled out. What seems to be the most likely reason for the apparent brightness of those regions is ice. Perhaps they are particularly deep craters, hence are colder than the others around them and so ice forms more easily. But this is just speculation, and the answers will be known once the Dawn spacecraft is orbiting Ceres. With orbital insertion expected on the 6th March, we won’t be waiting long!
This heavily cratered world is reminiscent of icy moons, such as Saturn’s moon Tethys and Uranus’ moon Umbriel. Indeed, the cratered nature of Ceres also weakens the argument for a subsurface liquid water ocean that some scientists had speculated could be beneath the surface of Ceres, as the two moons with liquid oceans in our Solar System are Europa and Enceladus, both of which have very sparse cratering.
So all in all, these images have revealed more about Ceres than ever before, but have yet to truly answer the killer questions. More images are expected to be released in the coming weeks ahead of orbital insertion on the 6th March, and hopefully questions will finally be answered.