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 […]
Tag Archives | Vesta
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 […]
Introducing the Partners: The STEM Center at SIUE
The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) Center for STEM Research, Education and Outreach comprises an independent group of researchers and educators, innovating ways to engage students and the public in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Within the SIUE Graduate School, the STEM Center @SIUE brings together research faculty, graduate students and practitioners to conduct […]
Vesta’s Giant Impact
Vesta is, in so many ways, the weirdest world that you are mapping here on CosmoQuest. It’s small enough to be non-spherical and is covered in the scars of its many impacts. The largest impact basins on its southern pole are records of some of the most defining moments in Vesta’s history. They are even […]
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 […]
Make a Little Vesta
3D printers are all the rage when you want to make unique designs. I’ve seen intricate jewelry, custom action figures, and even 3-dimensional models of potential wells as demonstrated for a physics class. My favorite 3D creation so far, though has to be a model of asteroid 4 Vesta. The Dawn spacecraft blew our minds […]