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NASA rotating view of Ceres Occator Crater. Best images yet.

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posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 02:19 PM
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This NASA combination animation and newest imagery overlay is really fantastic.

The video rotates Occator Crater in a complete 360 continuous oblique view. The 3-D topographic map really shows the geography of this place like nothing else I have ever seen. The arrangement of the bright spots can be visualized so much better with this kind of presentation.

I just wanted to share it with everyone, in case you did not see it. This article comes from the New York Times, but the content in the article is NASA/JPL. I did not see it posted any where else in the other threads on Ceres here on ATS.

Enjoy.

NASA Occator Crater rotational presentation.



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 02:39 PM
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Here's that video Chas, there are good stills as well on the NASA site somewhere.







posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 02:39 PM
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a reply to: charlyv
What I'm trying to understand is the topographic map shows the spots to be well below the rim, but what about this:
www.planetary.org - LPSC 2015: First results from Dawn at Ceres: provisional place names and possible plumes...

Then he focused on the bright feature. It is located in the floor of a crater 80 kilometers in diameter. From its behavior as the globe rotates, he said, the bright feature appears to lie in a depression. The images that have been released to the public from the rotation animation do not show all of the photos of the bright feature, so the next point concerns images that I can't show you. "What is amazing," he said, "is that you can see the feature while the rim is still in front of the line of sight. Therefore we believe at the moment that this could be some kind of outgassing. But we need higher resolution data to confirm this." What he is saying is that as Ceres' globe rotates and the 80-kilometer crater's rim rotates into view, that rim should block our ability to see the bright feature on the floor of the crater. However, the bright feature is already visibly bright as the crater begins to rotate into view. Therefore, it must be vertically above the rim of the crater: it must be some kind of plume. "During the day," Nathues went on, "the feature evolves: it brightens. At dusk it gets fainter; at late dusk it disappears completely. We see this for cometary activity."

What's written there shows they believed the bright spot(s) were below the rim, but a camara was seeing the spots even when the rim was in the line of sight--meaning the spots should not be visible. Since they were visible, it was thought it must be a plume (or outgassing). So have higher resolution data confirmed or rejected?

Remember this was data probably collected between December 2014 and February 2015. Topographic data was collected from Rotation Characterization 2 data on February 19, 2015.

So the data says the spot is below the rim but the camara was catcyhing something above. What's it? Do we know? Was it a result of low resolution glitch, like pixel glitches in high compression JPG?

The plume, or whatever it's, was apparently detected at a later date, as is evident in this July 21 2015 article in Nature:
www.nature.com - Mystery haze appears above Ceres’s bright spots...

Note that while not all of the team thinks these plumes (or hazes) are there, I have yet to see this staunchly dismissed. Note also the linked article above suggests sublimating ice as a more likely explanation than salt to produce the (apparent) haze, yet I've read articles where the team leader (I believe) says most of the team leans towards salts.

EDIT: The reported diamter of Occator in the first link was 80 kilometers (~50 mi). Yet on other sites I've seen 57 mi and 60 mi diameters. Honestly, what causes different sites to have different diameters for it?
edit on 9/14/2015 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 02:55 PM
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a reply to: jonnywhite




What's written there shows they believed the bright spot(s) were below the rim, but the camara was saying they were seeing the spots even when the rim was in the line of sight, meaning the spots should not be visible. Since they were visible, it was thought it must be a plume (or outgassing). So have higher resolution data confirmed or rejected?


I agree that there is a conflict yet unresolved there still. It could be, that the filtration is masking a plume that is being generated by whatever those spots really are, and it can only be seen rising above the crater rim in that way. I am sure they are working their respective tails off trying to figure out what the source of those white spots are, and like you, I think they are giving off plumes of gas as well. We shall know soon!!!!



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 02:58 PM
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a reply to: smurfy

Thanks smurfy. Embedded is better and appreciate that.



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 03:03 PM
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originally posted by: jonnywhite
"What is amazing," he said, "is that you can see the feature while the rim is still in front of the line of sight. Therefore we believe at the moment that this could be some kind of outgassing. But we need higher resolution data to confirm this." What he is saying is that as Ceres' globe rotates and the 80-kilometer crater's rim rotates into view, that rim should block our ability to see the bright feature on the floor of the crater. However, the bright feature is already visibly bright as the crater begins to rotate into view.

That's is exactly how it appeared to be, I mentioned about that in a post in another, 'Ceres' thread back a while. There should be another gif showing the area as it comes round in the gif, plus the other gif was not so highly contrasted as the one in your link, which in any case, doesn't show the spot appearing at the terminator line...some frames missing.



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 03:11 PM
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What I find amazing is the depth of the crater, 4 miles at its highest point. That must have been a serious impact.



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 03:56 PM
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a reply to: charlyv

If the bright spots are salt deposits from pools of liquid that have now sublimated away, then from the topology, I can see better spots for liquid to have pooled, adjacent to the bright spots.

I am wondering if the deposits might actually be chemo-luminescent, electro-luminescent or some odd configuration that makes up a naturally occurring Light Emitting Diode?

Normally LED's emit along the axis of the junction between two differently 'doped' regions of semiconductor compounds like diamond, silicon, silicon carbide or germanium (doping in this instance is the inclusion of specific impurities in the semiconductor to moderate its electrical properties. Dopants are elements such as Aluminium, Nitrogen, Indium, Boron, Arsenic, Antimony, Bismuth, Lithium, Phosphorus and Gallium).

Under a cometary impact, these elements could be laid down horizontally and the substrate fused into a 'glass' (like silicon glass) with its downward side doped differently to its upper side.

To light such a region, all that would be required is an electrical differential between the top and bottom surfaces, say a static electric charge, which may be caused by the friction of out-gassing vents (a nod to the possibility of a "plume").

Anyway, that's one "way out there" theory.


edit on 14/9/2015 by chr0naut because: (no reason given)



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 04:02 PM
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originally posted by: Nexttimemaybe
What I find amazing is the depth of the crater, 4 miles at its highest point. That must have been a serious impact.


The speed of a "typical" comet is roughly 40kms as it travels in the inner solar system before and after it's perihelion.
Ceres travels a relatively consistent 18kms in it's orbit around the sun.

The potential from a head-on (comet heading back towards Oort cloud and Ceres heading towards comet) is one nasty impact, and probably the kind of evidence you would suspect in Occator Crater. Deep, wide and not so old.

My suspicion is that the crater is of cometary impact, and what was left over from the comet, and not completely annihilated, is still at the center and ablating. Possibly causing out-gassing as the Sun shines on it. Purely speculation on my part.

It may be that an Ice Volcano requires an impact as well to adequately expose inner sub-crustal ice. It is a cool subject.



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 04:12 PM
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Build a moon base on it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just Start building a SANCTUARY!!!!



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 04:20 PM
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a reply to: charlyv

Thanks for the reply.

What you wrote was very very interesting.

Thanks again.



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 07:43 PM
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Confused, why is this in skunk works?



posted on Sep, 14 2015 @ 08:03 PM
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originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
Confused, why is this in skunk works?


Well, to me, the reason for the white spots is still scientific speculation until NASA analyzes all of the data. I guess it could be moved to space exploration if the mods think it more appropriate.




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