Mysterious bright spot on Ceres has a partner

Ceres

PLUMES OR PATCHES? Two bright patches on Ceres, seen in this image from the Dawn spacecraft, could be plumes of water vapor, one scientist speculates.

JPL-Caltech/NASA, UCLA, MPS, DLR, IDA

An enigmatic bright patch on the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body between Mars and Jupiter, has a dimmer companion in the same basin. The duo, seen in an image from the Dawn spacecraft when it was about 46,000 kilometers from Ceres, could be a sign of active ice volcanoes.

Dawn will arrive at Ceres on March 6 after an eight-year voyage that included a 14-month stop at the asteroid Vesta. Once there, Dawn will spend the rest of the year mapping Ceres in a quest to better understand the history of the solar system.

Christopher Crockett is an Associate News Editor. He was formerly the astronomy writer from 2014 to 2017, and he has a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles.

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