According to phys.org, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has revealed stunning new topographical maps of the dwarf planet. Ceres is the biggest object in the asteroid belt, having a diameter of 584 miles; about forty percent the size of Pluto. These are the first detailed maps of the body ever released, featuring official place names.
Advertisement
Scientists are getting some new insights when it comes to the dwarf planet Ceres.
With craters 3.7 miles (6 km) deep and mountains rising about the same distance from its surface, Ceres bears a resemblance to some of Saturn’s frozen moons. The global Astronomical Union recently approved a batch of names for features on Ceres. [Watch Ceres Turn in Video Map by Dawn]. Ceres. These maps reveal that the height difference between the bottoms of craters and the tops of mountains are as large as 9 miles (15 km). “The features are pretty consistent with an ice-rich crust”.
During the weeks when the world was held captive by New Horizons, Dawn had been mapping Ceres; now, it is on its third mapping orbit. Occator, the mysterious crater containing Ceres’ mysterious bright spots, is named after the Roman agriculture deity of harrowing, a method of leveling soil. New researchhas revealed that the bright spots of Occator release gas to the surface, creating a localized atmosphere within the crater. On the other hand, a smaller crater, also hosting bright spots, was baptized Haulani. It’s named after a Hawaiian plant goddess, and seems to be colder than the surrounding area. It boasts a 2-mile-high (3 km) pointy peak rising out of the center, and is named for the Indian and Iranian god of plants and fields. The craters Dantu and Ezinu are both approximately 75 miles in diameter, roughly half the diameter of the Kerwan crater.
“The impact craters Dantu and Ezinu are extremely deep, while the much larger impact basins Kerwan and Yalode exhibit much shallower depth, indicating increasing ice mobility with crater size and age”, said Dr Ralf Jaumann from the German Aerospace Center in Berlin, who is a Dawn science team member.
Advertisement
As the team analyzes data, the spacecraft is slowly spiraling down to an orbit just 900 miles above the surface of Ceres. The three images appear slightly flattened in the y-axis and smeared in the upper part due to the motion of the spacecraft. From 2011 to 2012, the probe has conducted observations of Vesta.
