Cool image time! Dawn’s science team has released a much closer image of the double bright spots on Ceres.
The spots can now be resolved into a half-dozen spots of varying size, all of which suggest material with a high reflectivity, likely ice. They look so bright because the rest of the dwarf planet’s surface is so dark.
Cool image time! Dawn has released a new animation made from images taken in early May, showing more details of the dwarf planet’s double bright spot.
As they note at the link, the double spot is now “revealed to be composed of many smaller spots.” As they also add, “Their exact nature remains unknown.”
Dawn’s engineers are now beginning to ease the spacecraft down to its survey orbit, about 2,700 miles above the surface.
After a brief delay when the spacecraft went into safe mode due to a communications issue, Dawn has now begun its research phase around Ceres.
Cool image time! As Dawn’s orbit around Ceres has slowly brought the spacecraft up over its north pole and towards its daylight side, it has now become possible to once again spot the giant asteroid’s bright spots.
The science team has also released a very short animation that shows Ceres rotating below it with these bright spots coming into view.
Cool image time! The Dawn science team has released its first new images as the spacecraft begins its slow journey from Ceres’ night to day sides.
The images are looking down on the giant asteroid’s north pole. They have also released a short animation where they stitch together the images, allow us to see Ceres rotate under the spacecraft.
The Dawn science team has released the first global map of Ceres, based on the preliminary images produced during the spacecraft’s approach in March.
This map is very preliminary. The global survey produced during Dawn’s year long visit will be far more detailed.
A month after it entered orbit around the asteroid Ceres, engineers report that Dawn is functioning perfectly in preparation for its first orbital images on April 10 and April 14.
Link here. Chief engineer Marc Rayman loves to write about Dawn, and his posts on the Dawn blog are probably the most information-packed of any spacecraft blog I have ever read. Key quote this time:
Dawn’s extensive photographic coverage of the sunlit terrain in early May will include these bright spots. They will not be in view, however, when Dawn spies the thin crescent of Ceres in its next optical navigation session, scheduled for April 10.
The orientation of the spacecraft and asteroid now are such that there is no point taking pictures, as most of the asteroid is in darkness.
Read it all, however. He gives a masterful overview of what is going to happen in the coming months.
Data collected by Dawn since it entered orbit around Ceres on March 6 now strongly suggests that the bright spots on the surface are produced by venting water,
Andreas Nathues, principal investigator for Dawn’s framing camera, says the feature has spectral characteristics that are consistent with ice. Intriguingly, the brightness can be seen even when the spacecraft is looking on edge at the crater rim, suggesting that the feature may be outgassing water vapor above the rim and into space. “Ceres seems to be indeed active,” he says. The feature brightens through the course of the day, and then shuts down at night. Nathues says the behavior is similar to that of comets.
More here. By mid-April Dawn should finally settle this with high resolution images.
Get ready for cool images! Dawn was successfully captured by the gravitational field of Ceres early this morning, and is now in orbit around the planet/asteroid.
Because of the orbital mechanics of its arrival, however, Dawn will observing Ceres’s night side until mid-April, which means we will not see many new images until then.
More cool images! As Dawn moves in on Ceres and prepares to enter orbit on March 6, it has managed to assemble enough images to produce a global map of the almost spheroid-shaped giant asteroid.
The bright spots however remain a mystery which cannot be answered until we get higher resolution images from much closer. Hopefully, Dawn will be able to do this once it is in orbit.
Cool images! Dawn’s newest images have revealed that the brightest spot on Ceres, shown on the right in a cropped version of the full image, has a dimmer companion.
“Ceres’ bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, but apparently in the same basin. 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,” said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The spots are still too small for Dawn’s camera to resolve. That they are inside what looks like a crater is very puzzling. If they are water-ice, why are they so bright and distinct? One one think the ice would pile up along the crater wall, but then, that’s what we think based on our experience here on Earth with wind, rain, and our heavy gravity. Ceres is cold, has no atmosphere, and a tiny gravitational field. Every geological process will proceed in a different manner.
Cool images! The Dawn science team has released new even sharper images of the giant asteroid Ceres, taken by Dawn on February 12 at a distance of 52,000 miles.
Though the surface appears to have many of the typical craters, scientists continue to be puzzled by the bright spots. This newest image suggests that they are ice-filled craters, but don’t hold me to that guess. For one thing, why are only a handful of craters filled with ice, and none of the others?
More cool images! Dawn has taken its best pictures yet of the solar system’s largest asteroid Ceres.
The image on the left is a computer enhanced version. They have also created an animation of the image sequence. All the images were taken on February 4 from about 90,000 miles distance.
On Sunday Dawn took the best images ever of Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system.
The images are still somewhat fuzzy, as the spacecraft is still more than 140,000 miles away.
Some data produced by Dawn while it was in orbit around the asteroid Vesta have suggested to some scientists that liquid water might have helped create a handful of the surface features on the asteroid.
The theory is interesting and might be true. I also wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it, because this interpretation of the data is somewhat tentative and based on a lot of assumptions.
Getting closer! Scientists for the space probe Dawn have released new images of Ceres, the solar system’s largest asteroid.
Some of the images have been combined to produce a very short movie showing the asteroid’s rotation. The images also show that unlike Vesta, Dawn’s previous target, Ceres appears very spherical, like a planet.
With its arrival set for March, the space probe Dawn has now officially begun its approach to Ceres, the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt.
After more than two years of travel from Vesta, the space probe Dawn has now gotten close enough to Ceres to snap its first image.
The spacecraft will begin its approach phase on December 26 and will arrive in March.
The scientists who used Dawn to map Vesta have now published detailed geological maps of the large asteroid.
More here.
