Ceres' bright spots are back: Dawn captures new images of mystery features - and scientists STILL...

MailOnline ^ | Jonathan O'Callaghan

[BenLurkin]

As the spacecraft gets closer to the dwarf planet and moves around it, more and more of the surface is coming into view.

The two brightest spots seen in a crater are known as ‘spot 5’.

The scale in the image is about 1.3 miles (2.1km) per pixel, almost 70 per cent better than previous images.

But the origin of the bright spots remains a mystery for now - with theories ranging from exposed ice to volcanoes.

Salt flats or ice seem to be the predominant theories at the moment, with the bright spots appearing to reflect incoming sunlight towards the spacecraft’s cameras.

Until Dawn gets closer, though, it’s unlikely the mystery will be resolved.

‘It’s too early to say what they are,’ Dr Marc Rayman, Dawn's mission director and chief engineer, told MailOnline.

‘Some people have offered they might be ice, but I don’t consider that necessarily the most likely explanation.’

[onedoug]

Respectfully, that’s absurd.

[Talisker]

Glowing in the dark - especially at the same brightness level - pretty much dumps the reflection hypothesis for me.

If it's aliens, they obviously want to be seen.

[Fred Nerks]

The last person who left Ceres forgot to turn off the lights.

[Swordmaker]

The last person who left Ceres forgot to turn off the lights.

Must be some of them thar new fangled LEDs to last this long. . .

[Axenolith]

It’s a Berserker and the shiny spot is just a bit of metal showing through the otherwise pounded surface from the last solar system it sterilized...

[Fred Nerks]

maybe chemiluminescence

PHOSPHORUS

Phosphorescence is the slow decay of a metastable electronic state to a lower energy state through emission of light. The decay is slow because the transition from the excited to the lower state requires a spin flip, making it classically forbidden. Often it involves a transition from an excited triplet state to a singlet ground state. The metastable excited state may have been populated by thermal excitations or some light source. Since phosphorescence is slow, it persists for some time after the exciting source is removed. In contrast, chemiluminescence occurs when the product molecules of a chemical reaction (HPO and P2O2 in this case) leave the reaction in an electronically excited state. These excited molecules then release their excess energy in the form of light. The frequency (colour) of the light emitted is proportional to the energy difference of the two electronic states involved.[5]

[Fred Nerks]

WOOPS! Didn’t mean for that to be in red...

[Swordmaker]

It’s a Berserker and the shiny spot is just a bit of metal showing through the otherwise pounded surface from the last solar system it sterilized...

At this point, that may be as good an explanation as any.

[trebb]

Segregated swimming pools...

[Jack Hydrazine]

[martin_fierro]

Lol

[BenLurkin]

Excellent

[MrB]

Explanation of the bright spot: A powerful laser propelling a space ship with "light sails".

[BenLurkin]

Nice!

[SunkenCiv]

It’s a colony of Earthlings, set up by Marconi and his people when he built flying saucers and they left for Mars.

[SunkenCiv]

Extra to APoD.

[cripplecreek]

I’m thinking its ice.

In the graphic you can see as the spot emerges from the dark that its a raised spot in the center of a crater like a rebound mountain.

[SunkenCiv]

/bingo

Ice has a higher albedo than whatever covers most of the surface of Ceres.

[cripplecreek]

We’ll know a lot more when they start doing spectral analysis when Dawn settles into a true orbit.

[SunkenCiv]

Maybe it’s the priests of the temple of Ceres.