NEW YORK: Back when the NASA probe Dawn was approaching the asteroid promoted to dwarf planet, Ceres, it captured some images of a bright spot on the surface of the rock, which immediately raised suspicions that there is water there. New fresh images from Dawn that it is now in orbit around Ceres has further confirmed these suspicions.
The images make it appear that water not only exists on the surface of Ceres, but that it is actually spewing into space. The bright spot appears to be inside a crater, and is visible from the side which means, if it is water or water vapor spewing into space, then it is so big that it is protruding above the top of crater. “What is amazing is you can see this feature while the rim is very likely in front of the line of sight,” said Andreas Nathues, who is in charge of the mission’s camera, and presented the images yesterday at the Lunar and Planetary Science conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas. “We believe this could be some kind of outgassing.”
Images of Ceres captured throughout the entire course if its “day” show that the spot brightens during the day and completely disappears at night. This means that it could be a collection of ice on the surface that gets heated by the sun and releases gas. We won’t have any conclusive data until Dawn leaves the dark side of Ceres and gets back over to the light side, which will be in about a month. Ceres shows very strong signs of water, which means the possibility of life.
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