Dawn's Survey Orbit at Ceres |
Dawn's Survey Orbit at Ceres |
Jun 15 2015, 05:47 PM
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#1
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 |
daily Ceres picture from the survey orbit
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images...tml?id=PIA19572 I started a new topic, as we are no longer in the first orbit phase |
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Jun 24 2015, 05:15 AM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 184 Joined: 2-March 06 Member No.: 692 |
Yes. I just can't get my head around how we could be seeing a freshish ice deposit on such an old and probably dead world, so salt it is.
And just to think outside the box, is the bright stuff from an impactor? |
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Jun 24 2015, 05:49 AM
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#3
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
And just to think outside the box, is the bright stuff from an impactor? Could well be, or exhumed fresh ice from recent impacts. The only way original impactor material could survive in such relatively pristine (and closely grouped) condition would be via a VERY low impact velocity. That would be a more tenable hypothesis if there was just one such feature on Ceres, but there appear to be several. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jun 24 2015, 03:39 PM
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#4
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Member Group: Members Posts: 112 Joined: 31-January 15 From: Houston, TX USA Member No.: 7390 |
Could well be, or exhumed fresh ice from recent impacts. The only way original impactor material could survive in such relatively pristine (and closely grouped) condition would be via a VERY low impact velocity. That would be a more tenable hypothesis if there was just one such feature on Ceres, but there appear to be several. We had discussed the low energy/velocity impactor theory back in one of the earlier threads and I'm certainly still in that "camp", with maybe the impactor actually being a rubble pile. I don't like to use a theory that requires a currently active body when there are still alternatives that fit the available data. One possibility to explain the multiple locations is that there are rubble piles near Ceres orbit that were originally pieces of Ceres until they were excavated by an impact. These almost co-orbitals eventually find there way back to Ceres at a very slow velocity with little mass. Andy |
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