Thanks BenLurkin.
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Posted on 12/13/2017 1:16:23 PM PST by BenLurkin
If you could fly aboard NASA's Dawn spacecraft, the surface of dwarf planet Ceres would generally look quite dark, but with notable exceptions. These exceptions are the hundreds of bright areas that stand out in images Dawn has returned. Now, scientists have a better sense of how these reflective areas formed and changed over time—processes indicative of an active, evolving world.
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The first group of bright spots contains the most reflective material on Ceres, which is found on crater floors. The most iconic examples are in Occator Crater, which hosts two prominent bright areas. Cerealia Facula, in the center of the crater, consists of bright material covering a 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) pit, within which sits a small dome. East of the center is a collection of slightly less reflective and more diffuse features called Vinalia Faculae. All the bright material in Occator Crater is made of salt-rich material, which was likely once mixed in water. Although Cerealia Facula is the brightest area on all of Ceres, it would resemble dirty snow to the human eye.
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The leading explanation for what happened at Occator is that it could have had, at least in the recent past, a reservoir of salty water beneath it.
In the case of the Vinalia Faculae, the dissolved gas could have been a volatile substance such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane or ammonia. Volatile-rich salty water could have been brought close to Ceres' surface through fractures that connected to the briny reservoir beneath Occator. The lower pressure at Ceres' surface would have caused the fluid to boil off as a vapor. Where fractures reached the surface, this vapor could escape energetically, carrying with it ice and salt particles and depositing them on the surface.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
This Hugh & Ceres!......................
I suggest they are an outpost mining operation.
Could those bright spots be ice? Such as the last of their glaciers surviving their man made global warming. Better see what Al has to say.
Hugh Manatee has finally gotten Ceres about it.
Cerealia Facula — see, there are even crop circles on Ceres.
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