[meteorite-list] New Names and Insights at Ceres

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4669

New Names and Insights at Ceres
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
July 28, 2015

[Image]
This color-coded map from NASA's Dawn mission shows the highs and lows 
of topography on the surface of dwarf planet Ceres. 
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Colorful new maps of Ceres, based on data from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, 
showcase a diverse topography, with height differences between crater 
bottoms and mountain peaks as great as 9 miles (15 kilometers).

Scientists continue to analyze the latest data from Dawn as the spacecraft 
makes its way to its third mapping orbit.

"The craters we find on Ceres, in terms of their depth and diameter, are 
very similar to what we see on Dione and Tethys, two icy satellites of 
Saturn that are about the same size and density as Ceres. The features 
are pretty consistent with an ice-rich crust," said Dawn science team 
member Paul Schenk, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, 
Houston.

Some of these craters and other features now have official names, inspired 
by spirits and deities relating to agriculture from a variety of cultures. 
The International Astronomical Union recently approved a batch of names 
for features on Ceres.

The newly labeled features include Occator, the mysterious crater containing 
Ceres' brightest spots, which has a diameter of about 60 miles (90 kilometers) 
and a depth of about 2 miles (4 kilometers). Occator is the name of the 
Roman agriculture deity of harrowing, a method of leveling soil.

A smaller crater with bright material, previously labeled "Spot 1," is 
now identified as Haulani, after the Hawaiian plant goddess. Haulani has 
a diameter of about 20 miles (30 kilometers). Temperature data from Dawn's 
visible and infrared mapping spectrometer show that this crater seems 
to be colder than most of the territory around it.

Dantu crater, named after the Ghanaian god associated with the planting 
of corn, is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) across and 3 miles (5 kilometers) 
deep. A crater called Ezinu, after the Sumerian goddess of grain, is about 
the same size. Both are less than half the size of Kerwan, named after 
the Hopi spirit of sprouting maize, and Yalode, a crater named after the 
African Dahomey goddess worshipped by women at harvest rites.

"The impact craters Dantu and Ezinu are extremely deep, while the much 
larger impact basins Kerwan and Yalode exhibit much shallower depth, indicating 
increasing ice mobility with crater size and age," said Ralf Jaumann, 
a Dawn science team member at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin.

Almost directly south of Occator is Urvara, a crater named for the Indian 
and Iranian deity of plants and fields. Urvara, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) 
wide and 3 miles (6 kilometers) deep, has a prominent central pointy peak 
that is 2 miles (3 kilometers) high.

Dawn is currently spiraling toward its third science orbit, 900 miles 
(less than 1,500 kilometers) above the surface, or three times closer 
to Ceres than its previous orbit. The spacecraft will reach this orbit 
in mid-August and begin taking images and other data again.

Ceres, with a diameter of 584 miles (940 kilometers), is the largest object 
in the main asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. This makes 
Ceres about 40 percent the size of Pluto, another dwarf planet, which 
NASA's New Horizons mission flew by earlier this month.

On March 6, 2015, Dawn made history as the first mission to reach a dwarf 
planet, and the first to orbit two distinct extraterrestrial targets. 
It conducted extensive observations of Vesta in 2011-2012.

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, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space 
Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international 
partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, 
visit:

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

More information about Dawn is available at the following sites:

http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

http://www.nasa.gov/dawn


Media Contact

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

2015-248