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Dawn captured the most detailed images of Ceres in orbit at a distance of 22 miles above the surface. The new orbit allowed the spacecraft to get a sharper picture of the strange bright spots of Ceres at the Occator crater. (19459013) NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA )
The NASA Dawn spacecraft took the best and most detailed photos of Ceres while it was maneuvering towards a new orbit around the dwarf planet
Relic of the first solar system
Astronomers were eager to learn more about Ceres because it is a relic of the early days of the solar system. This world has not changed much in the last 4 billion years.
One of the things that has attracted the attention of scientists is the bright white spots at the bottom of the Occator crater of the dwarf planet.
Bright Spots On Ceres
] Dawn discovered that the floor of Occator on Ceres hosts strange shiny deposits in early 2015 when approaching Ceres. Subsequent observations have shown that the bright substance, which also occurs in other places, is made of sodium carbonate, a material also present in the evaporite deposits on Earth.
The material was probably abandoned when salt water boiled in space.
Low Orbits
The new Occator images captured by Dawn on June 14 and 22 may help to understand the mystery by providing a more detailed picture of the crater's bottom
. Dawn is like a master artist, adding rich details to the beauty of another world in her intimate portrayal of Ceres, "said Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory project leader. The best is to look at the strange dots of the dwarf planet as it approaches Ceres at a distance of only 22 miles above the surface.This distance is more than ten times closer of the surface that Dawn has never had in the last three years at Ceres.
The lowest altitude Dawn before last month was 240 miles, which means that its orbit current provides a clearer picture of the dwarf planet.
Low orbits revealed unprecedented details of the relationship between light and dark materials in the Vinalia Faculae region of the crater.
Data obtained by others instruments of Dawn dev oil the composition of the dwarf planet to a finer scale, which could illuminate the origins of surface materials. "These new high-resolution data allow us to test theories formulated from previous datasets and discover new features of this fascinating dwarf planet," said Carol Raymond, Dawn's principal investigator. Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA.
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