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Scientists puzzled by strange lights on dwarf planet Ceres
openminds.tv
Scientists are perplexed by a pair of strange lights on the surface of Ceres–a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft photographed Ceres on February 19 from a distance of approximately 29,000 miles. Although regions of higher-than-average reflectiveness have been seen on Ceres before, these new photos from Dawn show two bright spots within the same basin on the dwarf planet’s surface.
Strange lights on Ceres. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)
“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 in Germany, in a recent NASA press release.
Although scientists are puzzled by these mystery lights, they aren’t without possible explanations. As Mashable describes, “The most obvious contender is ice, although ice would reflect more than 40% of all light hitting it. The difference may be accounted for by the resolution limit of Dawn’s camera at this distance. Scientists have previously detected water vapor coming from the surface of the dwarf planet, making ice — a more likely option.”
But Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, believes, “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.”
Artist’s concept showing Dawn orbiting the giant asteroid Vesta. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will enter orbit around Ceres on March 6, and will continue collecting better photos of the dwarf planet and its mysteries during the next 16 months. With better photos, scientists will hopefully be able to better determine if the strange bright spots on Ceres are signs of an extraterrestrial civilization, or if they indeed have a volcanic origin.
The post Scientists puzzled by strange lights on dwarf planet Ceres appeared first on Openminds.tv.
Source: http://www.openminds.tv/scientists-puzzled-strange-lights-dwarf-planet-ceres/32322
The spots’ location are almost tangential to the sunlight. At such an angle, light reflecting from ice obliquely would, IMO, appear rather black – no less not appearing bright.
The only other explanation must be exiled Martian Space Squirrels signaling back to Mars for re-supply. Mars should be positioned somewhat behind the spacecraft.
But I opt for the ice theory. There are one or two other craters in the photo, where the centers are ‘illuminated’. This could be due to a common ‘impact back-fill bulge’, or an actual low spot, where ‘whatever’ would accumulate. This may be ice crystals (dust) gathered by gravity – which Ceres has a good bit of as it is past the minimum 500mi diameter threshold where gravity ‘spherizes’ the mass.