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 22 2015, 04:26 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
I imagine that impacts onto an ice world (or an icy-rocky-slush world) generate internal heating from acoustic/seismic energy propagating through the body. As we can see, there have been a lot of large impacts on Ceres. so there has been at least localized heating capable of melting ice, at least for a time. I'm not saying that a peppering of impacts could keep the core continuously warm -- I'm just saying that, when it gets really whacked and a big crater or basin is formed, I bet that anything from very localized to larger-area heating occurs. Chaos being what it is, I can imagine pockets of water melting out inside the crust from such large impacts, refreezing, and then getting exhumed by later impact and tectonic forces.
This could mean that Ceres may have been dead, for all intents and purposes, for billions of years, but that a good, solid whack could make it wheeze and burp a bit, even now. I think when we get a better feel for the compositions of the various texture/albedo/color units, it will tell us a lot more about the possible histories of this curious little world. -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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