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NASA's Dawn mission gets to Ceres next week. Since its 2007 launch, it's already visited the asteroid Vesta and extensively studied it. But Ceres is the largest of the objects in the Asteroid Belt. It's big enough to be a dwarf planet, the only one in the inner Solar System. Ceres will be the first dwarf planet to be visited by a space probe, but not for long the only one. New Horizons is due to arrive at Pluto in July.

Click here to find out more about Ceres.

Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 03/06/15 08:29 AM.
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There are two bright spots on Ceres, sitting in the middle of a crater. Lots of guesses about what they are – many of those doing the rounds on the internet are the usual nonsense. But three good possibilities:
(1) Ice volcanoes, such as those on Saturn's moon Enceladus or Neptune's moon Triton;
(2) Ceres is known to have water ice – maybe reflections off ice patches;
(3) The surface of Ceres is composed of quite dark material – impacts or eruptions could leave fresh rock or ice, which would be quite bright.

Although Dawn arrives at Ceres next week, it will be about six weeks before she gets a good look at these bright spots. It will take some time to get the spacecraft's orbit in synch with that of Ceres.

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Here is the most recent picture from the Dawn spacecraft of the mystery spots on Ceres.

Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 03/06/15 08:38 AM.
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At about 7:39 a.m. EST (12:39 GMT) today, NASA's Dawn spacecraft was captured by the gravity of Ceres. That makes it the first craft to orbit a dwarf planet.

"Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid and later a dwarf planet," said Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission director at the Jet Propulsion Lab. "Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres, home."

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We'll soon be getting views of Ceres from the Dawn spacecraft, but here David Dickinson tells us that the views from Ceres would be very interesting.

The most frequent transits we see are Mercury passing in front of the Sun. There were fourteen of these in the twentieth century. Transits of Venus are rare. There were none in the twentieth century and two in this century – in 2004 and 2012. It will be over a hundred years from now when Venus passes between us and the Sun.

However there will be three transits of Venus visible from Ceres this century and hundreds of transits of Mercury over several centuries. And since Ceres is farther away from the Sun than both Earth and Mars, we might expect to see transits of both of those planets. And yes, if anyone is hanging out on Ceres in June 2033, they could see a transit of Mars. But transits of Earth seem to be rare – there doesn't seem to be a single one expected during the current millennium.

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The mysterious bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres were back in view last week. There are a pair of them in region 5 and another in region 1. The spot in region 1 is much cooler than its surroundings, but that's not the case for region 5. The principal investigator for the Dawn mission suggests it could have to do with how well the surface material conducts heat. The mystery spots got everyone's attention as Dawn approached Ceres back in February and they are still intriguing.

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Dawn has been photographing the mystery spots on Ceres again. A pair of them in this crater, seen closer on May 3 & 4, is made up of yet more bright spots. It looks like they may represent the Sun reflecting off highly reflective material on the surface of Ceres.

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They look almost like bug eyes or maybe it's the reflection off of my glasses. Very interesting.

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If you could put all the asteroids in the asteroid belt together, there wouldn't be enough material to make anything bigger than the Moon. So even though the biggest asteroid Ceres has been classified as a dwarf planet, it's still pretty small.

But NASA's Dawn has already shown that Ceres is going to be interesting. Here is a map-projected view of Ceres made of images Dawn took on the first approach to Ceres. It shows that there are differences in the surface materials and structures. This suggests that Ceres was once an active body.

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That looks awesome. Great pic. It looks kind of like a psychedelic moon.

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