is Ceres a dwarf planet, a Plutoid, an asteroid or a comet?

I don't get it. They want to use this as the first mission to probe different objects after orbiting and not a mere fly by. We could have already been to ceres by now... way before this. Why the wait? The second propulsion from vesta was postponed due to issues... but they spent the mission budget with the potential for failure of never before used tech at the risk of not reaching ceres without a completely new mission.

I don't understand that.

we've got way older probes past ceres. It's not like it was too far without a jump with a second propulsion.
Why take the risk of having to wait even longer? When you read about how they have evaluated the composition, it's seems they know more than they have told us so far.

Face it... to know we are that close to a planet that could contain life and never having heard it on a list of planet that could be potentials... i think it's at least fair to say it could be they don't want strange sightings being attributed to coming from ceres.

...because then instead of talking about Sirians, we'd be talking about Cerians.

How could they eliminate as a possibility when they don't even have an up close picture of it... yet it doesn't get mentioned. I mean there are whole orgs devoted to search for et life in any form... but this doesn't make top of the list? No... other solar systems planets make top of the list.

Why exclude it if they don't know so much about it? the potential is definitely there.

reply to post by NotAnAspie


What an interesting post. Thank you OP, star and flag.

2nd

reply to post by Unity_99



no offence by why would they need to enhance any details of the blurry picture if the clear one that I posted is real? It's much more clear.... so why still use the blurry one? Why enhance it into something nowhere near as clear as the one I think is an overlay of the radar image?

maybe you didn't look at the picture I linked to and thought I was talking about the one in the wikipedia article. That is not the one I am talking about. If the clear one that i posted which I think is fake is totally genuine, then that is the one that should be used to represent it in the article. It doesn't look real to me. You can see the ridges under the water. I doubt you'd be able to see through that much water and ice to see the exact ridges that are in the radar image. It indicates it is at least a partial composite of the radar image, which is consider not genuine.

the clear image is used on many not very well known sites, but it is not used as an official image on any of them. It is not used in any nasa article I can find. that suggests that it is edited or an artist rendition. I think it is a color overlay of the radar rock images that you would likely not see in a real photograph from a distance. When you take a picture of earths oceans, you don't see the ridges but you see them on google, but google is not seeing through the water. That part is a radar image to show the ocean floor and details. You would not see that in a real photograph unless the water is crystal clear and unfrozen with no obstruction and then you still probably wouldn't see it due to reflection of the sun.... but in that picture, you can see them almost as clear as you can see them in the radar image.

It's a composite... that is my take.

To believe that this is real is to insinuate they haven't been holding back on better images of ceres... ACTUAL images, yet they have. That's the purpose I think it serves.

NotAnAspie
reply to post by peter vlar

 

difficult to ignore but I bet most have not heard about it.

As for the images... those aren't really images I'm assuming (prior to taking the time to research the images). I am pretty certain those are radar images and not what the planet actually looks like because that image suggests to anyone who is not aware that it is a radar image that it is only rock....making it look even more like an asteroid. So, that makes my comparison of the two images irrelevant... but my point remains that we should have a better image of Ceres. An ACTUAL image. Can you find me and ACTUAL image of Ceres that shows it's terrain better?... because it shouldn't be that hard.

And why circle vesta when Ceres is probably much more interesting. that makes no sense.

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You may be right about the origin of the picture I posted. I should have checked prior to doing so. Irregardless, the surface of Ceres is consistent with that photo and a few others I've seen. I agree there should be better images but be patient. They are forthcoming unless something happens to Dawn after it leaves Vesta. You've got to understand that the camera resolution, used by Hubble for example, isn't very well suited to capturing detailed images of small objects within its own back yard. As for why stop at vesta at all let alone first there are a couple of reasons. First is they are both located near a boundary that essentially separates barren rocky worlds from those that can still have water to somewhat oversimplify it. Scientifically it's important to see both to understand what makes them so different when in terms of AU's they aren't so far apart. The second reason is Vesta is closer to the sun than Ceres. We have to go by it anyway so because if reason one its all too logical to do so. 2a. Is that every 17 years Ceres and Vesta line up with the sun so it makes it a lucky coincidence this is about to occur and shortens the time to travel to Ceres considerably.
As for why Ceres is ignored as a potential habitat for life that could hange soon also. There just isn't enough known about it at
The moment to make it a priority especially when we've invested considerable resources in exploring Mars. Once more data is uncovered by Dawn we may very well see a surge in interest with Ceres. Scientists need
To eat too and if there's funding for Mars that's where you're going to try to work no matter how you feel about Ceres. Hopefully it will spur some reinvigorated interest once Dawn gets there and starts sending back data.

reply to post by peter vlar


well, some of it sounds reasonable enough especially with them lining up but concerning it being spoken about as a potential life bearing planet... I found something else I thought I was unusual.

To make sure that Ceres had not been omitted from a list of planets possibly having life, I looked for a list again from different sources. I know there are such lists in various places... but I noticed something very interesting.

Without a doubt, google's chosen way of looking for my request produced a list for EXOplanets that could have life... not merely planets.... from the top and more official entries.

While some may just chalk it up to technicality, I find it very odd that if you are specifically looking for a list of planets like this, you are likely only going to read articles regardless of whether or not they call them exoplanets or just planets, that are speaking about the one's from the list that is *specifically* described *officially* by the more reputable sites as the list of "EXOplanets".... not the list of planets.

And I've still yet to find a list mentioning Ceres... unless it's a site or page conspiratorial in nature.

So I think they should have at least put it on some list of planets (only there doesn't seem to be an official list where it would fit) because while it may not in fact be the case that life is there, it's still a possibility as of right now since they do not yet know according to their story and the factor we know do lean toward it...Ah, but they didn't exactly lie, did they? Because they made sure to describe that list as "exoplanets"... even though they could have easily still called it a list of planets except for the fact that the omission of ceres might technically seem like a lie after the fact that we are learning it is indeed a planet.

It seems like they took care to call that list exoplanets, looking back...specifically so they would not have to mention ceres and so they would not eventually be caught in a lie, technically. I mean, they could have called it a list of planets, for what they don't yet know can't be counted against them... but it seems they've known about the conditions there for a while... so they have to give us a little more credit if they want us to not be suspicious.

I'm just noticing a lot of strange things.

I mean where was the excitement to study this thing all these years?
It's way more interesting than many of the other planets... no matter how small.
I personally cannot figure out why we spend so much time with mars... yes, it's interesting... for an archaeologist.

I'm not saying we should NEVER put this much effort into Mars just to look around, because I feel it's full of history... but not so much full of future. I do not ever think we can substantially colonize it without exhausting and unreasonable efforts... so while we are still trying to get off the ground so to speak, studying what remains on Mars should not be priority if the information about it is true. For education, we would be better investing our time to twice as many studies of Venus for reasons I won't get into, even though I know it is not ready for colonization. I think it does stand the better future potential and aside... is in the midst of very important and interesting planetary and weather processes we stand to learn much from... but now reading about ceres, well we should have spent a lot of time learning about it. Not only is it exciting, but hell... it could be a threat!

Now that is not an attempt to turn it negative into a reptilian invasion scenario but I'm just trying to find the logic. Knowing how our society treats security... it amazes me to think this is all they have acquired so far.

I'm not entirely knocking the scientists reasons and involvement... and I'm not even knocking the governments need to keep some information secure, but what I'm saying is that if we are able to extract the information eventually and we realize from that information that they have not thought we are capable of understanding many things or more importantly... DESERVING, then they are just making things harder on themselves when we do find out.

A government needs it's people to be able to trust it. If there is anything covered up, it's more about the government than the scientists, I imagine. It's not just for the sake of shouting COVER UP, but that even if we don't fully encompass things on a nasa level, it doesn't mean we can't figure out when they've left something out.

I really don't think that is a good idea.

As for the picture...we've sent probes to the outer planets and it's just very surprising we couldn't have at least gotten a better shot by now... as small as it may be.

they listen to the solar system.. and hear things. It may not be signals from life but they do... so have they listened to ceres? Did they hear anything? I'm sure they've done a lot of things, but no full write up so far. There's gotta be more than this.

I just want to know more... regardless.

this planet is very interesting.

Ceres orbits around the sun at a mean distance of 413,690,604 km. At that distance from the sun, the surface temps of any planet would be well below the freezing point of water.

In fact, the warmest it get's on the surface of Ceres is 235 Kelvin or -36 deg F. Without the aid of a thick atmosphere to help trap heat, water there will be in solid form.

Ceres is quite small, with a radius of less than 500 km, with a mass of only 9.43 × 10^20 kg, or only about 0.0128 of our own moon. That is no where near enough for a gravitational field to hold on to a thick atmosphere.

Ceres had been classified as an "Asteroid" since 1802, when in 2006 it, along with many other objects in our solar system was reclassified by the IAU to "Dwarf Planet". The reasoning behind this was because originally the definition for "Planet" was:

a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid-body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet

Unfortunately by this definition, every single Kuiper Belt object beyond the orbit of Pluto of significant size enough to obtain a spherical shape would have to of been classified as a "Planet"

Instead, an addem was added to the definition:

cleared the neighborhood around its orbit

Ceres does not dominate it's orbit, but instead shares it with thousands of other asteroids.

Unfortunately the word "Asteroid" is pretty much the definition of anything that is not: A planet, A star, A moon, or A comet. Some Kuiper Belt objects are larger in diameter than Pluto, and Ceres is quite smaller than Pluto.

So a new class called "Dwarf Planets" was made and fall in between the category of "Planet" and "Asteroid":

a celestial body in direct orbit of the Sun[1] that is massive enough for its shape to be controlled by gravitation, but that unlike a planet has not cleared its orbital region of other objects.

Another "Sub Category" of Dwarf Planets would be "Kuiper Belt Object", which are located in orbits past Neptune.

Hubble's resolving power is not great enough to show us a lot of detail of small objects that are far away. The smaller the object, and the smaller away it is, the harder it is for a telescope to show that detail. For example: in order to see one of the lunar landers on the moon, you would need a telescope, that has a primary mirror over 1 football field in size!. And that's just a small object located 250,000 miles away.

You've shown pictures of Ceres taken by Hubble, and pictures of Vesta taken by the Dawn space craft. Here is what Vesta looked like take from Hubble:



That is the best it can do. So nothing like having a space craft in orbit around the object that you want high detailed pictures of.

Dawn will get to Ceres in 2015. It left Vesta a just over a year ago. It's journey is slow because it's using a Ion Drive that takes a long time to accelerate a craft, but is great to not need a lot of fuel to carry around.

And while finally getting some up close pictures of Ceres will be great (and then some of Pluto by the New Horizons flyby later in July 2015), I would not hold my breath hoping for some Earth looking like planet.

With a small rocky core, frozen ice water, and dust, Ceres is more than likely going to end up looking a bit more like this moon of Saturn here:



A dust covered icy rock.

The temperatures you give are surface temperatures. That doesn't mean the water is solid all the way through. If heat still remains in the core, then the ice surface may actually help to retain heat...like an igloo. Also, there may be friction underneath the surface, if the water is not completely solid. With little evidence of an atmosphere, the atmosphere may actually be comprised of the ice and what remains below it is on a separate convection dynamic opposing the ice.

There may be a geo-dynamo under the surface of that ice that we are not used to seeing since we are used to seeing gaseous atmosphere. This would be an entirely new way of looking at a planet... if the ice is actually helping to retain it's characteristics or repel some outside factors. The rotation is not slow and I've yet to read an indication that there have been significant changes in the rotation speed... and it does not behave like an asteroid. If the rotation is not slow, this could relate to convection. I'm not in a position to explain the exact physics behind that but convection of the core suggests there is heat there in.

What is coldest may be the surface if a traditional atmosphere is thin at best.

A cold surface that is not that far beneath freezing temperatures, could very well still be holding heat.

And there is also the idea that some animals even on earth, when they become too cold... become inactive as opposed to completely dying. There may be thermal vents, water currents and convection under that surface... which only makes this planet more interesting.

Granted... it may not be correct to call every round object a planet, but this is much different than an asteroid. I consider that there was once a planet where the asteroid belt exists... what if this was one of it's moons? Now that it is maintaining it's own orbit, it would not be correct to call it a moon now even if it had been. It's like nothing else in the asteroid belt. Even many moons do not have such a spherical and interesting profile. I think some moons are captured asteroids...whereas the ones that have less asteroid like qualities to do not present themselves as being wayward, battered captured objects. They usually show a more special relationship to their planet.... so what makes them different, to me, is their origin.

I just don't think ceres wandered into it's location... I do not think it is an incomplete piece of broken debris like many asteroids seem to be. It think it, like our moon or other planets was either birthed highly spherical by nature from a planet as our moon was... or from the sun, like a planet. It is not just a broken stray piece. Planet or ex moon, I don't know.... but it seems very special and not just a floating rock.

NotAnAspie
I just don't think ceres wandered into it's location... I do not think it is an incomplete piece of broken debris like many asteroids seem to be. It think it, like our moon or other planets was either birthed highly spherical by nature from a planet as our moon was... or from the sun, like a planet. It is not just a broken stray piece. Planet or ex moon, I don't know.... but it seems very special and not just a floating rock.

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The most likely explanation for Ceres being the shape it is, in the orbit it is in is due to Jupiter. Or more precisely Jupiters gravity. Even NASA considers it an "embryonic" planet. Gravitational perturbations by Jupiter made it impossible for the proto planetary mass to form into a cohesive planet. What you end up with is the entirety of the asteroid field Ceres and all. Whether the water beneath the crust is liquid or solid is interesting. Ceres is cold enough and small enough that if let to its own devices it would likely be in the form of ice. However there may be enough tidal pull from Jupiter to create just enough convection to keep some of it in liquid form. Be patient like the rest if us and we will have answers in 2015!

peter vlar

NotAnAspie
I just don't think ceres wandered into it's location... I do not think it is an incomplete piece of broken debris like many asteroids seem to be. It think it, like our moon or other planets was either birthed highly spherical by nature from a planet as our moon was... or from the sun, like a planet. It is not just a broken stray piece. Planet or ex moon, I don't know.... but it seems very special and not just a floating rock.

edit on 7201331PM10PM12p13America/Chicago by NotAnAspie because: (no reason given)

The most likely explanation for Ceres being the shape it is, in the orbit it is in is due to Jupiter. Or more precisely Jupiters gravity. Even NASA considers it an "embryonic" planet. Gravitational perturbations by Jupiter made it impossible for the proto planetary mass to form into a cohesive planet. What you end up with is the entirety of the asteroid field Ceres and all. Whether the water beneath the crust is liquid or solid is interesting. Ceres is cold enough and small enough that if let to its own devices it would likely be in the form of ice. However there may be enough tidal pull from Jupiter to create just enough convection to keep some of it in liquid form. Be patient like the rest if us and we will have answers in 2015!

That is an interesting theory on Jupiter, but as a person with superior patience, you have just now disqualified yourself from making guesses.

It would be interesting to read more about this embryonic quality.

In any case, I hope the interest in Ceres rises...and other planets as well such as Venus.
I think it helps people understand just how lucky the inhabitants of this planet are and helps to cultivate environmental concern and curiosity about what could be "out there"

Ceres is barely 1000kms in diameter, and only a tiny fraction of the mass of the Moon (never mind the Earth). There is no way that it is habitable. It has no atmosphere!

I am not really keen on the "dwarf planet" definition of Ceres (or anything else for that matter). As far as I am concerned Ceres is the largest asteroid, just like Eris and Pluto are the largest (known) Kuiper Belt objects.

Ceres looks like a little earth, is the size of Texas, has possible water under surface, I'd suggest on it from the photos, the frozen parts, (Electric Universe is a whole different ballgame, with energy from sun interacting with planet, to create heat, so I don't believe NASA on any of this). Water would imply an atmoshere, they certainly have moons already out there that are potential for life under the frozen water, such as Europia, and this has been compared to that.

www.space.com...

www.astrobio.net...

The spectrum indicates that water is bound up in the material on the surface of Ceres, forming a clay. Schmidt compared it to the recent talk of minerals found by NASA's Curiosity on the surface of Mars.

"[Water is] literally bathing the surface of Ceres," she said.

In addition, astronomers have found evidence of carbonates, minerals that form in a process involving water and heat. Carbonates are often produced by living processes.