DawnSpacecraft
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Dawn spacecraft captures a sunlit Ceres on cam
The Dawn spacecraft has recently captured the sharpest pictures of Ceres to date, showing the dwarf planet's bright, sunlit north pole. NASA's space probe has been steadily making its way to the celestial body since 2012 after a 14-month stint orbiting the asteroid Vesta. It fired up its ion thrusters in March to slowly approach the Texas-sized proto-planet and settle into orbit, until it reaches an altitude of 233 miles from the surface. Its ultimate goal? To take 3D images and create a high-res map of Ceres, which might harbor some form of water.
Scientists puzzled by 'bright spots' on surface of dwarf planet Ceres
As NASA's Dawn spacecraft approaches orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, researchers aren't sure what's causing the "bright spots" on its surface. The imaging orbiter snapped the above picture from 29,000 miles (46,000 km) away just last week, but until it gets closer for a more detailed picture, the folks at NASA aren't ready to decide the light sources' origin. "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," said Andreas Nathues, a lead investigator at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany. "This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us."
