Dawn Assumes Survey Orbit; Photographs Bright Spots on Ceres with Best Clarity Yet

originally posted by: GoShredAK
a reply to: egidio88

If so that really does look like nothing more than some sort of shiny residue from an impact.

Obviously NASA has taken this time to doctor the photos and hide the alien civilization.

i compared the pics, it's not our crater =D

originally posted by: egidio88

originally posted by: GoShredAK
a reply to: egidio88

If so that really does look like nothing more than some sort of shiny residue from an impact.

Obviously NASA has taken this time to doctor the photos and hide the alien civilization.

i compared the pics, it's not our crater =D

Oh good

That would have been anticlimactic.

NEW PIC!!!

Dawn Survey Orbit Image 6
This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers). The image, with a resolution of 1,400 feet (410 meters) per pixel, was taken on June 6, 2015.


www.jpl.nasa.gov...

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
For the time being. As Dawn gets closer, I'm sure we'll get an answer. My bet is on frozen gas of some sort.

That's a pretty good guess as well. Well whatever it is, even if it's mundane, it will be highly interesting to me.

originally posted by: egidio88
NEW PIC!!!

Dawn Survey Orbit Image 6
This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers). The image, with a resolution of 1,400 feet (410 meters) per pixel, was taken on June 6, 2015.


www.jpl.nasa.gov...

I can see a few more small patches of overexposed pixels, like the overexposed pixels that show up as the famous "bright spots", but smaller.

a reply to: soylent green is people

and a piramidal mount =P

www.jpl.nasa.gov...

today's pic

www.jpl.nasa.gov...

today's pic

originally posted by: egidio88
www.jpl.nasa.gov...

today's pic

That definitely looks like reflective material on the surface, as opposed to a cryovolcano or any other type of emission.

Someoen show me some evidence htis isn't a dead silent lifeless world resembling our.... moon--or mercury? A moon of jupiter is more interesting just simply because of the tidal heating which can do everything from heating an itnernal ocean to causing volcanic upheaval. Jupiter's neighorhood is a city compared to Ceres' hovel.

But I'm glad we went there. Someone might ask "Well why not send that money to Africa or Iraq or Israel or California or etc." My feeling--err response--is something like "Humans needs to explore. Part of solving the world's probelms is inspiring and building up our knowledge of things."

I don't think either of the newest pics are the "bright spot" crater but here's something I found interesting...





That's an awful lot of symmetry from completely random events. Two craters were formed by objects with nearly the exact same diameter and an impact with almost identical depth right next to each other?

originally posted by: Answer
...That's an awful lot of symmetry from completely random events. Two craters were formed by objects with nearly the exact same diameter and an impact with almost identical depth right next to each other?

But is it really "an awful lot of symmetry"? I was curious to see how unusual this type of symmetry was, so I took a quick look at a portion of Earth's moon to see how much crater symmetry was there:


I suppose one could counter by saying "Maybe the craters on Earth's moon are not random, either", but there is no reason to believe these "twin crater" examples are odd or out of the ordinary.


EDIT TO ADD:

I looked at a part of Mercury and found several examples of "twin craters" side-by-side. I even found a triplet.

Latest images PIA19575 and 19576 make up this cool mosaic: www.flickr.com... including the bright spots seen on the horizon at the top left corner.



To my eyes, the surface isn't entirely Moon-like, there's a good variety of terrain features, some of which look Mars-like.

New image of bright spots (released June 22; taken June 9):



This newest image shows the spots to the right of the brightest area to be comprised of several smaller spots -- which we can see better now that those spots are no longer over-exposed.

However, the area on the left is still too over-exposed to see what is really there. Perhaps in later images we will see it less over-exposed, and maybe we will be able to see the real surface under those bright pixels.

Source:
photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov...

Now to keep an eye out for changes in any of the shapes, over time.

a reply to: Ross 54

Not being ungrateful to you OP, but that image actually looks worse quality than the last most recent image...the res looks very much lower.

Is there a link to a higher res version that you know of?

NM...found one from egidio88's link.

originally posted by: MysterX
a reply to: Ross 54

Not being ungrateful to you OP, but that image actually looks worse quality than the last most recent image...the res looks very much lower.

Is there a link to a higher res version that you know of?

NM...found one from egidio88's link.

true, look worse but now we clearly have those 2 little spots at the right properly separated?

i.imgur.com... also, our "pyramid" again... and nasa called it pyramid too on its facebook page, lol!

www.jpl.nasa.gov...

this time we have right exposition (dim planet, as it should be) and still pretty bright spots

now that we have the most interest pic yet y'all disappear? ahahhahahaah