Bright lights present intriguing possibilities.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: An infrared inspection of the unidentified bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres — first glimpsed “close up” from a distance of 45,000 kilometers last month — has revealed the two anomalies each have their own unique thermal properties.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is currently in orbit around Ceres, which sits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Mission scientists unveiled the latest results from the spacecraft at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, today.
Federico Tosi, who works on Dawn’s Visible and Infrared Spectrometer, presented the infrared images on behalf of NASA.
“What we have found is that bright spot number one corresponds to a dark spot in the thermal image,” he said at a press conference today. In other words, the bright spot is much cooler than its surroundings.
Scientists say that the bright spots may be related to ice exposed at the bottom of impact craters or from some kind of active geology, according to Nature international weekly journal of science. The publication New Scientist cites speculation that they could be the sites of watery volcanoes, also known as cryovolcanoes.
Researchers expect a close look at Ceres’ surface to reveal clues about the formation of protoplanets in the early Solar System, 4.5 billion years ago.
Dawn took its most recent set of images on April 10, according to Nature, but only a small fraction of the dwarf planet’s surface was illuminated at the time and mission scientists have not yet released them. The spacecraft will begin detailed science investigations on April 23, after it settles into permanent orbit.