Ceres, More Fresh Water Than Earth!?, From Space.com Options

[tedstryk]

It's funny that at about the same time we find ourselves talking about how small Pluto is, and how big Ceres is. 

Originally they called Ceres a planet and then demoted it for being too small. I always wonder if it had tipped the other way, and everything not a comet orbiting the sun was called a planet. It would have made the way the solar system is presented in school unrecognizable, but given the fact that there is apparently no great size gap that we once thought existed, it might actually have been a more realistic conception of our solar system than the one we were taught with nine planets neatly orbiting the sun.

[tedstryk]

Check out this version of the rotation movie. It is much more natural.

http://www.swri.org/press/2005/Images/ceres_movie.html

http://www.swri.org/press/2005/ceres.htm

[deglr6328]

I wonder if we are missing any other potential internal heating mechanisms possible besides tidal flexing and radioactive decay which could create a liquid ocean on small ice worlds like this......can't think of any though...

[alan]

When the bright spot is near the right limb it appears to be the central peak of a crater. A patch of ice poking through the darker crust perhaps?

[Decepticon]

Nice link tedstryk!

Its intresting to see so much detail on such a small body.

[Guest_Myran_*]

Its three different gif animations for the three frequency bands, and so the rotation for the three version may not be syncronised, its rather unlikely it will be in fact.

[SigurRosFan]

--- Its density is similar to that of Ganymede (1940 kg/m3) and Callisto (1860 kg/m3). ---

Ceres: The missing fifth galilean moon??

http://xs45.xs.to/pics/05360/Ceres_Jupiter_System.gif

[alan]

Wow, that makes Ceres look puny.

[Bob Shaw]

--- Its density is similar to that of Ganymede (1940 kg/m3) and Callisto (1860 kg/m3). ---

Ceres: The missing fifth galilean moon??

http://xs45.xs.to/pics/05360/Ceres_Jupiter_System.gif

Without wishing to labour the point, the Galilean moons *are* planets! Well, they would be if they were anywhere other than orbiting Jupiter (unless they were in the Kuiper Belt, when of course they'd be, er, you know, thingies. Wossernames...). And Ceres is a mini-planet at best...

[Decepticon]

Proto Planet

[SigurRosFan]

Well, they would be if they were anywhere other than orbiting Jupiter ...

Thus, Ceres is a mini-planet or a "embryonic planet"?

And the layered jupiter moons are capture-planets.

p.s. Er, what is a planet??

[Bob Shaw]

Thus, Ceres is a mini-planet or a "embryonic planet"?

And the layered jupiter moons are capture-planets.

p.s. Er, what is a planet??

Shhsh! If I tell you that, I must kill you...

[SigurRosFan]

...

Are there specifications for the maximal thickness of Ceres' ice layer somewhere?

[tedstryk]

This all makes me wonder...Is Vesta, being basaltic, part of the core/mantle of a destroyed planet in the asteroid belt, and is Ceres the largest attempted planet, with similar ratios to proto-Vesta, not to be destroyed. It would indeed be cool to find out that Ceres was an ejected galilean moon. But it is hard for me to see how it ended up in its current orbit in such a case.

Bob: The idea that the galileans are planets is an interesting idea....I have always thought that it would be a cool idea to define planet as worlds large enough to be reasonably spherical (nonwithstanding elongation from ultra-fast rotation) and possible sustain internal activity (maybe Enceladus be around the cutoff there). Otherwise I support abandoning the term. Many suggest keeping it narrow despite the lack of a cut off so that we have a reasonable number of planets to teach schoolchildren. I say that we can't define the solar system's nature based on what would be easier for school children, because this is, in actuality, giving the children a severely distorted view of the solar system, not a better one.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

... 

Are there specifications for the maximal thickness of Ceres' ice layer somewhere?

If -- as suggested in the press release -- Ceres may be as much as 25% water ice, then the ice layer would be about 10% as deep as Ceres' total radius.