“One of the dreariest spots on life’s road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you.” –Faith Baldwin
Bet you thought you knew it all about the asteroid belt. These frozen, ice-and-rock worlds orbit farther out from Mars, closer in than Jupiter, and occasionally get hurled towards the inner Solar System by gravitational interactions. But the largest world, Ceres, at just about half the diameter of the Moon (or the size of Texas), exhibits an unusual surprise: a brilliant set of white spots at the bottom of one of its largest craters.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
While the speculation abounds from simple (water-ice) to the astounding (aliens!), there are only three realistic possibilities given what Dawn has seen so far. What’s even more exciting? It’s already got the equipment on board to decide which possibility is the right one!
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA / montage by Tom Ruen.
Come find out the whole story behind Ceres’ white spots — so far — over at Starts With A Bang!
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