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BREAKING!! new photos of CERES from NASA Dawn mission!!!
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NASA's Dawn mission sends back some spectacular images of Ceres VERY up close!!!! [link to go.nasa.gov]
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DAWN probe is now orbiting a mere 200 miles above CERES. WHY NO NEW PICS? NASA offers new claim about reason for bright spots.
A frozen sea? Sunlight glinting off an alien spaceship? As NASA’s Dawn space probe closed in on Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt, the images it beamed home in early 2015 revealed startling bright spots on the surface of this otherwise asphalt-dark world. Speculation was rife as to what they could be, with NASA creating an online poll so everyone could have their say.
Mission scientists led by Andreas Nathues of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Goettingen have now revealed the spots are patches of a salt, probably hydrated magnesium sulfates. These are similar to the Epsom salt athletes use in the bath to relieve sore muscles, and gardeners sprinkle on their roses. The finding, published in Nature in December, makes Ceres the first body to be neither asteroid nor comet, but something in between – a sort of comety asteroid.
The Nathues team suspected that Ceres’ bright spots were reflective salt flats, similar to the bright dry lakes in Australia’s Simpson Desert. So they created different types of frozen salt in the lab with varying amounts of water, and measured how they reflected infrared light. The reflective properties of hydrated magnesium sulfate made it the most likely candidate for the bright patches on Ceres.
Dawn’s spectral imaging cameras supported the idea the salt was hydrated. When viewed from close to edge-on, they captured a haze of dust and ice particles during Ceres’ day.
[link to cosmosmagazine.com (secure)]
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