I’m going to come right out and ask the burning question: Is Pluto a Planet? No. At least under the current definition. So the question becomes “Should Pluto be a planet?” That answer is a bit more complicated. Let’s look at the history. Discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Pluto was initially considered the ninth planet of our Solar System. It was part of an intense search that follows back all the way to the discovery of Uranus and the orbital calculations that led to the discovery of Neptune. Even after Neptune’s discovery, gravitational perturbations pointed to a ninth planet,...
NASA has been zeroing in on certain features of dwarf planet Ceres and looked at them in more detail. Here are the most surprising as well as what we know so far. There are a few other great videos in this playlist, but the first one gives a great summary of what has been seen so far. The most surprising and interesting feature of Ceres in my opinion has been the Occator crater. With the enigmatic bright spots that have been observed since the Dawn spacecraft approached Ceres, we are seeing them in finer detail than ever before, and we...
You’ve seen the planets, now let’s look at some of the best moons to visit in the solar system, ala the romanticized art deco style! Ceres is like a gas station for that long trip to Jupiter, treated as an icy rock that is not the best tourist destination. Enceladus is a lot like the spacefarer’s version of Yellowstone park, with the southern hemisphere geysers being the appeal. My two favourites are Titan and Europa. Titan’s colour scheme and view of Saturn are gorgeous, but the best part is the paddle boats in the hydrocarbon seas. The most interesting visit...
After talking about high resolution mapping of Ceres last week, it occurred to me that we have mapped so many distant worlds in our solar system. We have seen moons of Jupiter and Saturn up close, completely mapped Mars, and started mapping Pluto, pushing our boundaries of exploration. But what about our Moon? Sure the Earth-facing side has been seen in high definition. Anyone with a small telescope and a camera can take a great photo of the Moon. But what about the other side of the Moon, the so called dark side? It turns out that the Lunar Reconnaissance...
It’s mapping orbit #4 for the Dawn spacecraft as it orbits the dwarf planet Ceres. Currently mapping at an altitude of only 385 Km, the images are stunning, and give a feeling of actually being on Ceres. I can imagine the terrain, being in a crater, seeing the dark horizon off in the distance, the rocky-ice world untouched for Billions of years. It really reminds me of the Moon, with the powdery bright dust across the surface and craters dotting the landscape, yet when I see some of the close up craters, it feels very different from our familiar moon. ...
Since the arrival of the Dawn spacecraft in March of 2015, we have seen tremendous views of the dwarf planet Ceres. Lying within the asteroid belt, it is revealed to be a frozen world of ice and rock, with many interesting features. None of these features had generated more intrigue than the famous bright spot in the bottom of what is now called the Occator crater. The icy spot has had astronomers guessing for months whether it is a cryovolcano, water ice, frozen carbon dioxide, or something even more strange and rare. As the Dawn spacecraft has moved into a...
It’s hard to do experiments in space. It costs a boatload of money, takes years of preparation, and even then we can’t get much further than low-Earth orbit. But there is a cheaper alternative to understanding the universe. We can perform experiments on Earth to simulate what happens far beyond our own planet. That’s just what scientists did at the Vertical Gun Range at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. They found that Ceres is likely a mish-mash of celestial bodies from several billion years of bombardment. Until March of this year, when the Dawn spacecraft entered orbit of the...
The short answer is….we don’t know. It could still be a lot of different things, but take a look for yourself and see if you can figure it out. Here are the possibilities: Ceres is soon to make a descent to its lowest orbit for final mapping, and will be orbiting only 375 Km above the surface. This will give the highest resolution data yet, and hopefully shed some light on the mystery of Occator crater. What do you think?
The mysteries of the Occator crater on Ceres have continued to puzzle astronomers and the public, even as we have seen increasing resolution in recent photos. The latest photos show a resolution of 140 meters per pixel and reveal striking details, though the jury is still out on what exactly the bright material is and where it came from. It seems incredibly likely that the bright spots are ices of some sort, maybe even water ice, since Ceres is a water-rich body, and may have more water than Earth! One hypothesis is that Ceres has a subsurface layer of water,...
Since the Dawn spacecraft arrived at Ceres in March of this year, it has slowly been taking high resolution maps of the surface from several different altitudes. After each successive mapping run it moves into a closer orbit of the icy world for a higher resolution glimpse. After two successful mapping runs, we finally have a full high resolution topographic map of Ceres, revealing its cratered surface in unprecedented detail. With a quick look at the map, a couple of things become apparent immediately. For one, the surface craters are quite deep, and consistent with an icy crust. The size...
