bright spots on Ceres
Discussion
There may be some similarly to this?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-lumi...
Only a stub not a full article.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-lumi...
Only a stub not a full article.
ash73 said:
Bright spot on the terminator
Dawn arrives tomorrow, on my birthday
Now this is getting properly weird/interesting, it looks like its still the same spot in the crater but given the rotation its almost as if its emitting light? Dawn arrives tomorrow, on my birthday
I find it hard to believe it could be a camera glitch or reflection anymore so it will be fascinating to find out the source.
Eric Mc said:
Radio 4 said it might be salt deposits rather than ice.
I was going to post that. If anyone else is interested, there was an interview on Inside Science yesterday afternoon with one of the scientists involved with the Dawn probe. All the Inside Science episodes are available for download from the R4 website and it's a jolly good programme.Eric Mc said:
Radio 4 said it might be salt deposits rather than ice.
But why would ice or salt reflect/emit light when on the "dark" side of a body like in the above photo?I could believe it is any reflective material until I saw the above picture... unless the image was obtained with odd filtering?
Perhaps something we sent up years ago on a mars fly by and crashed on Ceres?
Aluminium heat reflective panels laid about from wreckage?
very central to the crater though, and the second photo showing it nearly side on is puzzling.
Scale of Ceres 950km diameter and the light areas?
Pillars of salt, volcanic minerals is possible I suppose.
Hoping for an Alien artifact but of course trillions to one against.
"The first images, from ten thousand kilometres away,
brought to a halt the activities of all mankind. On a billion
television screens, there appeared a tiny, featureless
cylinder, growing rapidly second by second. By the time
it had doubled its size, no one could pretend any longer
that Rama was a natural object.
Its body was a cylinder so geometrically perfect that it
might have been turned on a lathe - one with centres
fifty kilometres apart. The two ends were quite flat, apart
from some small structures at the centre of one face, and
were twenty kilometres across; from a distance, when
there was no sense of scale, Rama looked almost comic-
ally like an ordinary domestic boiler.
Rama grew until it filled the screen. Its surface was a
dull, drab grey, as colourless as the Moon, and completely
devoid of markings except at one point. Halfway along
the cylinder there was a kilometre-wide stain or smear, as
if something had once hit and splattered, ages ago.
There was no sign that the impact had done the slight-
est damage to Rama's spinning walls; but this mark had
produced the slight fluctuation in brightness that had led
to Stenton's discovery.
The images from the other cameras added nothing
new. However, the trajectories their pods traced .through
Rama's minute gravitational field gave one other vital
piece of information - the mass of the cylinder.
It was far too light to be a solid body. To nobody's
great surprise, it was clear that Rama must be hollow.
The long-hoped-for, long-feared encounter had come at
last. Mankind was about to receive its first visitor from the
stars."
Arthur C Clarke Rendezvous With Rama
Aluminium heat reflective panels laid about from wreckage?
very central to the crater though, and the second photo showing it nearly side on is puzzling.
Scale of Ceres 950km diameter and the light areas?
Pillars of salt, volcanic minerals is possible I suppose.
Hoping for an Alien artifact but of course trillions to one against.
"The first images, from ten thousand kilometres away,
brought to a halt the activities of all mankind. On a billion
television screens, there appeared a tiny, featureless
cylinder, growing rapidly second by second. By the time
it had doubled its size, no one could pretend any longer
that Rama was a natural object.
Its body was a cylinder so geometrically perfect that it
might have been turned on a lathe - one with centres
fifty kilometres apart. The two ends were quite flat, apart
from some small structures at the centre of one face, and
were twenty kilometres across; from a distance, when
there was no sense of scale, Rama looked almost comic-
ally like an ordinary domestic boiler.
Rama grew until it filled the screen. Its surface was a
dull, drab grey, as colourless as the Moon, and completely
devoid of markings except at one point. Halfway along
the cylinder there was a kilometre-wide stain or smear, as
if something had once hit and splattered, ages ago.
There was no sign that the impact had done the slight-
est damage to Rama's spinning walls; but this mark had
produced the slight fluctuation in brightness that had led
to Stenton's discovery.
The images from the other cameras added nothing
new. However, the trajectories their pods traced .through
Rama's minute gravitational field gave one other vital
piece of information - the mass of the cylinder.
It was far too light to be a solid body. To nobody's
great surprise, it was clear that Rama must be hollow.
The long-hoped-for, long-feared encounter had come at
last. Mankind was about to receive its first visitor from the
stars."
Arthur C Clarke Rendezvous With Rama
My first thought was the Aristarchus crater on the moon. Seems to come and go depending on the light. I think I have a few shots during a lunar eclipse where it dims (as does the rest of the moon).
Edit. That is to say the same method in action on Ceres?
Edit. That is to say the same method in action on Ceres?
Edited by jmorgan on Saturday 7th March 06:47
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