Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system, is continuing to reveal its secrets. The latest data from NASA’s Dawn probe, which has been in orbit around the dwarf planet since April last year, suggests this tiny world has water ice on the surface.
Dawn has been gradually lowering its altitude to get an ever closer look at this mysterious world. Today at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, the mission team unveiled their latest findings, including a spectacular view of the beguiling bright spots at the heart of the 92-kilometre-wide Occator crater (above) from the lowest orbit of just 375 kilometres up.
These spots have perplexed researchers since Dawn first reached Ceres, and we think probing their nature will provide clues to Ceres’s interior. In the new picture, Dawn has seen colour variations across the surface of the bright regions. These wouldn’t show up to the human eye, but reflect possible differences in the composition of the material seen by Dawn, said Ralf Jaumann of the German Aerospace Center in Berlin. “The big questions is the reason for this colour difference.”
This close-in view reveals that the central bright spot actually sits within a depression inside the crater, about 10 kilometres across, and at the centre of that is a small mound. “We’re starting to see how complex the distribution of the bright material is,” said Carol Raymond of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
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