{"id":19617,"date":"2015-08-25T21:58:58","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T13:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/dwarf-planet-ceres-puzzling-pyramid-mountain-gets-close-up-from-nasas-dawn-probe\/"},"modified":"2015-08-25T21:58:58","modified_gmt":"2015-08-25T13:58:58","slug":"dwarf-planet-ceres-puzzling-pyramid-mountain-gets-close-up-from-nasas-dawn-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/dwarf-planet-ceres-puzzling-pyramid-mountain-gets-close-up-from-nasas-dawn-probe\/","title":{"rendered":"Dwarf planet Ceres\u2019 puzzling \u2018pyramid\u2019 mountain gets close-up from NASA\u2019s Dawn probe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Conical
NASA\u2019s Dawn spacecraft spotted this tall, conical mountain on Ceres from a distance of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The mountain, located in the southern hemisphere, stands 4 miles (6 kilometers) high. (Credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech \/ UCLA \/ MPS \/ DLR \/ IDA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA\u2019s mission to that other dwarf planet, Ceres, has delivered a fresh bird\u2019s-eye view of one of the asteroid\u2019s most mysterious features: a cone-shaped, 4-mile-high \u201cpyramid\u201d mountain whose sides are covered with bright material.<\/p>\n

The Dawn mission\u2019s principal investigator says those shiny sides may be connected to Ceres\u2019 other big mystery: the bright spots that shine out from the mini-world\u2019s dark surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bright material on the mountain and in the bright spots are probably the same material,\u201d UCLA\u2019s Christopher Russell told GeekWire in an email. \u201cHow the material got on the sides of the mountain and also in the bottom of the craters is unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which begs the question: What is<\/em> that stuff?<\/p>\n

\"pluto\"
\nScience journalist Alan Boyle<\/strong> is the author of “The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made A Big Difference.”<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t yet have any consensus on how this mountain appeared,\u201d Russell said. \u201cThe bright material is probably salt, and probably the same salt type everwhere. It is difficult to tell one salt from another, especially in the visible part of the spectrum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russell said one possibility is a type of salt called hexahydrite, also known as hydrous magnesium sulfate or MgSO4<\/span>\u00b76H2<\/span>O. On Earth, it\u2019s a rare mineral with a bright appearance, and it\u2019s also been detected on the surface of Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter. Maybe it\u2019s on Ceres as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of Dawn\u2019s scientists, Vishnu Reddy, has proposed this, and it could be correct,\u201d Russell said. \u201cSome people expect this salt to be produced inside Ceres and then get transported to the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hypothesis is a subject of continuing debate among the scientists on the Dawn team. An alternate view is that the bright spots contain water ice.<\/p>\n

The latest view of the 6-kilometer-high mountain was taken on Aug. 19, from a height of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). Over the next two months, Dawn will map the entire surface of Ceres from that altitude six times and collect spectral data that should provide a better fix on the mysterious bright material.<\/p>\n

\"Mountain
NASA\u2019s Dawn spacecraft took this Aug. 19 image that shows a mountain ridge, near lower left, that lies in the center of Urvara Crater on Ceres. Urvara is an Indian and Iranian deity of plants and fields. The crater\u2019s diameter is 101 miles. (Credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech \/ UCLA \/ MPS \/ DLR \/ IDA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"NASA's
NASA\u2019s Dawn spacecraft took this Aug. 18 image of Gaue Crater, the large crater on the bottom. Gaue is a Germanic goddess to whom offerings are made in harvesting rye. The center of this crater is sunken in. Its diameter is 52 miles. (Credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech \/ UCLA \/ MPS \/ DLR \/ IDA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In late October, Dawn will start descending to its closest scheduled mapping orbit, heading for an altitude of 230 miles (375 kilometers). The car-sized spacecraft was launched in 2007, studied the asteroid Vesta in 2011-2012, and entered orbit around 590-mile-wide (950-kilometer-wide) Ceres this March after 3.1 billion miles of traveling.<\/p>\n

Dawn\u2019s latest revelations come as the team behind New Horizons, NASA\u2019s mission to the dwarf planet Pluto, is getting ready to resume releasing data from the probe\u2019s July flyby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA\u2019s Dawn spacecraft spotted this tall, conical mountain on Ceres from a distance of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The mountain, located in the southern hemisphere, stands 4 miles (6 kilometers) high. (Credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech \/ UCLA \/ MPS \/ DLR \/ IDA) NASA\u2019s mission to that other dwarf planet, Ceres, has delivered a fresh […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2838,5133,2840,190],"class_list":["post-19617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-ceres","tag-dawn-probe","tag-dwarf-planets","tag-nasa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}