Who would have expected a mystery on Ceres? The largest asteroid in the belt located between Mars and Jupiter seems fairly straightforward. The scientists expected similar results to the ones they gleaned from the study of Vesta, another asteroid being studied by Dawn. The Dawn spacecraft has been orbiting Ceres since 2015, however, and the […]
Tag Archives | Dawn
Shiny Spots on Ceres Still Mysterious
The Astrowatch blog reports that the strange bright spots, first discovered on the dwarf planet Ceres by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, continue to defy an easy explanation. A team led by Paolo Molaro of the Trieste Astronomical Observatory in Italy, following up on the Dawn observations conducted observations of these features, they found out something unexpected […]
A Mountain on Ceres
“No one expected a mountain on Ceres, especially one like Ahuna Mons,” said Chris Russell, Dawn’s principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles. These words are a sign of just how surprising the images that NASA’s Dawn probe have returned have been, since entering into orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015. The […]
Peeking Inside Vesta
The Dawn spacecraft has given us stunning images of Vesta to work through on the Asteroid Mappers project. It’s also given some key data about the interior and history of this huge asteroid. Vesta is the second largest asteroid in the Solar System, meaning that it is very much like the planetesimals, or embryos that […]
In-Vesta-Gating a World
This week, we’re doing a teacher professional development workshop with 20 Illinois teachers and covering In-Vesta-Gate, our unit on small bodies in the Solar System. In preparation, I’ve been refreshing my knowledge of Vesta, asteroids, and all the lovely tiny bits that make our Solar System such an interesting place to live. First off, I […]
Water Plumes on Ceres
We got some lovely news last week that was almost eclipsed by the very exciting supernova in M82. It turns out that asteroid/dwarf planet Ceres has water geysers jetting out from its surface. Ceres has a storied history, first being dubbed a planet upon its discovery in 1801, then demotion to asteroid 50 years later. […]
Announcing: Asteroid Mappers!
Today, we officially launched Asteroid Mappers which allows you to look at the amazing high resolution images that were taken of Vesta and start mapping the features!