[meteorite-list] 'Bright Spot' on Ceres Has Dimmer Companion

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4491

'Bright Spot' on Ceres Has Dimmer Companion
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
February 25, 2015

Dwarf planet Ceres continues to puzzle scientists as NASA's Dawn spacecraft 
gets closer to being captured into orbit around the object. The latest 
images from Dawn, taken nearly 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers) from Ceres, 
reveal that a bright spot that stands out in previous images lies close 
to yet another bright area.

"Ceres' bright spot can now be seen to have a companion of lesser brightness, 
but apparently in the same basin. This may be pointing to a volcano-like 
origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before 
we can make such geologic interpretations," said Chris Russell, principal 
investigator for the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, 
Los Angeles.

Using its ion propulsion system, Dawn will enter orbit around Ceres on 
March 6. As scientists receive better and better views of the dwarf planet 
over the next 16 months, they hope to gain a deeper understanding of its 
origin and evolution by studying its surface. The intriguing bright spots 
and other interesting features of this captivating world will come into 
sharper focus.

"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. This 
is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us," said Andreas Nathues, 
lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute 
for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany.

Dawn visited the giant asteroid Vesta from 2011 to 2012, delivering more 
than 30,000 images of the body along with many other measurements, and 
providing insights about its composition and geological history. Vesta 
has an average diameter of 326 miles (525 kilometers), while Ceres has 
an average diameter of 590 miles (950 kilometers). Vesta and Ceres are 
the two most massive bodies in the asteroid belt, located between Mars 
and Jupiter.

Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate 
in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, 
managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. 
UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., 
in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace 
Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian 
Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international 
partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgements, 
visit:

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission

For information about NASA's Dawn mission, visit:

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov


Media Contact

Elizabeth Landau 
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6425
elizabeth.Landau at jpl.nasa.gov 

2015-068