The dwarf planet Ceres has left NASA scientists baffled over bright spots that showed up on high res imagery taken from the Dawn Spacecraft. The Dawn is the first spacecraft ever to orbit a planet that is outside our solar system. The images that were taken a few weeks back were taken from a distance of 90,000 miles away from the planet but as of tomorrow it will officially be in the Ceres orbit.
Ceres is a 590 mile wide dwarf planet in the asteroid belt and contains about 30 percent of the belts total mass and was discovered by Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801. It is assumed by scientists that it contains a great deal of water, mostly in the form of ice. Indeed, Ceres may be about 30 percent water by mass. While the Dawn is not equipped to search for signs of life but it is equipped with a high res camera, infrared mapping spectrometer and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer will provide scientists with up-close looks at Ceres’ surface, which in turn could shed light on what’s happening down below. The bright spots are yet to be explained and could point towards how it was formed and the changes that are occurring on the planet at the moment.
