Posted on 07/21/2015 7:27:36 PM PDT by BenLurkin
“At noontime, if you look at a glancing angle, you can see what seems to be haze,” said Christopher Russell, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Dawn principal investigator. “It comes back in a regular pattern.”
According to Russell, who was speaking at a NASA exploration meeting at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the haze covers about half of the crater and reaches as far as the rim.
So far, scientists have theorized that the bright spots could be concentrations of minerals or salts. Or they might be icy deposits; potentially evidence for cryovolcanism.
The spacecraft hasn’t yet been able to properly analyze the spots, but the discovery of haze above a crater filled with bright dots could indicate something is outgassing into space — possibly sublimating water ice.
In 2014, the now-defunct Herschel infrared space telescope uncovered “unequivocal” evidence of water vapor at Ceres. However, since that discovery (and with the arrival of Dawn), the European observatory’s detection has not been confirmed. But with the discovery of “haze” above Occator crater, perhaps we may be hot on the trail as to the nature of these mysterious bright patches and the potential source of this elusive water vapor.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
Yes indeed.
The place where the black line crosses over the larger spot makes me think of the scene at the end of the The Fellowship Of The Ring in which Gandalf shouts "Fly you fools!"
If you want on or off the Electric Universe Ping List, Freepmail me.
Someone forgot to turn off the lights?
By George, I think you may have cracked it. . .
Local noon is when the sub-solar point is on the location’s meridian.
Geyser venting with the ejecta settling as snow, or ground frost forming around a vent plume.
Most of the smaller, raised features seem to have dimples on their tops.
WAIT!!! Is that a fossilized crab at the top of the round - - ness - ???
Someone has somethin’ on the boil...
It seems “they” are saying the roughly circular feature that holds the bright spots is a depression (crater). It appears more like a bulge.
It's a trick of the lighting. Turn the picture upside down.
Your brain expects the light to be coming from above. In this picture, it's coming from below.
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