“Ceres continues to amaze, yet puzzle us, as we examine our multitude of images, spectra and now energetic particle bursts”, Chris Russell, Dawn principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a press release. Topographic maps formulated by NASA scientists include names, based on agricultural theme, for a few features on the dwarf planet recently approved by the worldwide Astronomical Union.
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Nasa’s space probe Dawn, which travelled seven-and-a-half years and a few 4.9 billion kilometres to reach Ceres in March this year, is the first to orbit a dwarf planet.
“We’re having difficulty understanding what made that mountain and we have been getting many suggestions from the public”, Dawn’s principal investigator Christopher Russell told reporters at a space conference in Nantes, western France. For instance, a 12-mile-wide (20 km) mountain near Ceres’ north pole now bears the appellation Ysolo Mons, after a festival in Albania marking the first day of the eggplant harvest, NASA officials said.
But the probe will become a permanent part of the Ceres sky, as it is expected to stay in a stable orbit around the dwarf planet.
Other new Ceres maps featured colour-coded topographic images of the Occator (oh-KAH-tor) crater (below left), home of Ceres’ spooky bright spots, as well as what NASA now reckons is a four-mile high pyramid (below right).
A second Ceres map, in false color, highlights compositional differences present on the surface. These new visual data are keeping scientists busy in trying to understand the processes that could produce such enticing Cerean landscape. The instrument detected three bursts of energetic electrons that may come from the interaction between Ceres and radiation from the Sunday.
“This is a very unexpected observation for which we are now testing hypotheses”, Russell said.
According to BBC News, the new map comes from the Dawn spacecraft that is now orbiting Ceres at an altitude of 915 miles.
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From October to December, the spacecraft will begin its descent into its lowest orbit at an altitude of 230 miles. NASA stated that the spacecraft will remain operational “at least through mid-2016”. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science.
