Ceres tagged posts

Kwanzaa Tholus on Ceres map and elevation map on right showing prominences

What is a tholus? A tholus is a type of small mountain. These images show such a feature on dwarf planet Ceres called Kwanzaa Tholus. Kwanzaa, meaning “first fruits” in Swahili, is an African-American festival based on ancient African harvest celebrations, and takes place each year from December 26 to January 1.

Kwanzaa Tholus measures about 22 by 12 miles (35 by 19 kilometers) and is elevated about 2 miles (3 km) above its surroundings. Because the mountain does not rise sharply above the ground, it is difficult to see in the mosaic on the left, although a small crescent-shaped shadow stands out. The image on the right, which is an elevation map of the area, shows where Kwanzaa Tholus is more prominently.

The round...

SwRI scientists are studying the geology associated with the organic-rich areas on Ceres. Dawn spacecraft data show a region around the Ernutet crater where organic concentrations have been discovered (background image). The color coding shows the surface concentration of organics, as inferred from the visible and near infrared spectrometer. The inset shows a higher resolution enhanced color image of the Ernutet crater acquired by Dawn’s framing camera. Regions in red indicate higher concentration of organics. Credit: Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/ASI/INAF/MPS/DLR/IDA

Organic materials are probably native to the planet...

#Image1: View of the North Pole: The colours show the varying height of Ceres’ landscape. The numbers refer to ten craters where the Framing Cameras built in Göttingen at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research have discovered water ice. © Nature Astronomy
#Image2: Crater No. 1, whose interior has a large region in permanent darkness (a). In the weak scattered light, the framing cameras can make out bright deposits of ice (b). Crater No. 2 with its dark region is shown in Figures (c) to (e). The ice shown in (d) extends into the region with direct illumination (e). © Nature Astronomy

The American Dawn space probe has been orbiting the asteroid Ceres between Mars and Jupiter since March 2015...

Occator Crater, home of Ceres’ intriguing brightest areas, is prominently featured in this image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

The brightest area on Ceres stands out amid shadowy, cratered terrain in a dramatic new view from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, taken as it looked off to the side of the dwarf planet. Dawn snapped this image on Oct. 16, from its 5th science orbit, in which the angle of the sun was different from that in previous orbits. Dawn was about 920 miles above Ceres when this image was taken—an altitude the spacecraft had reached in early October.

Occator Crater, with its central bright region and secondary, less-reflective areas, appears quite prominent near the limb, or edge, of Ceres. At 57 miles wide and 2...