NASA Dawn, What will it discover about Ceres?

Hi Everyone,

I've been reading a few interesting articles over the last few days regarding the NASA Dawn mission and its approach towards Ceres.

Photo's/Video stills released this week show a bright object/area on the surface that is currently a mystery.

Space.com

Popular Science

Nasa Dawn mission status page

We should, over the next few months, get some impressive images of Ceres from this mission, and we should find out what this bright spot is!

I thought it might be fun to speculate what the bright spot may be, both serious speculation and 'out there' speculation; and see if any of us are right when/if Nasa find out.

My guesses are;

Serious - an ice field/exposed bed of some kind of reflective mineral

Out there - ground station for an alien civilisation monitoring our solar system

Intergalactic McDonalds ?
first off-planet baseball stadium?
Used spaceship lot?

That's no moon....



Come on, ya'll know it was bound to happen. Might as well get it done early in the thread.

I'm gonna go with an ice sheet.

a reply to: ukmicky1980

This white patch has been there for eons. And Ceres probably has near to no atmosphere (too small, it's smaller than the Moon, not enough gravity to hold air). Which means no insulation against the Sun. Which means if it was ice, it would have evaporated long ago.

It's not as crater neither, for the patch's appearance stays constant no matter the sun's angle of illumination.

Probably a boulder of some sort. A giant rock made of different material than the rest of the planet.

a reply to: ukmicky1980

The have covered up for several decades details that point to intelligent manipulation of Phobos, one of the tiny moons of Mars. They have taken decades to even admit that Mars once had water. Slowly, they are creeping toward telling us that there WAS life on Mars. But even that must wait. In retrospect, there is no reason to expect any shocking news about Ceres.

NASA is a propaganda factory as much as anything else. They have their schedule and they are keeping to it. That schedule seems to be to find evidence far away from Earth and then let that realization slowly circle back to our solar system to eventually acknowledge all of the phenomena that they have been ignoring for over half a century is really alien craft working at our planet.

My educated guess is that they will find Ceres has spots where liquid water from below the surface has oozed up and frozen.

The gif only starts with the white patch in view. Maybe it's a small moon in close geostationary orbit.

Besides that, The Telegraph says there is steam pluming up on Ceres, so that's quite possible what the bright spot is.


www.telegraph.co.uk...

I predict the following.

As soon as photos of Ceres are released people will "discover anomalies". They won't be anything other than jpeg compression artifacts, a rock, or a crap load of ice. But nothing will convince them otherwise.

Months later "anomalies" will turn inexplicably into definitive structures.

NASA will be accused of photoshopping all the strip malls, superdomes, and McD's in order to hide the "truth". That truth will somehow turn in to "Alien military bases to observe humanity".

Of course they won't realize that NASA has to color correct and make composites of these images in order to see details. And since Ceres is so far away from the sun light will be an issue. Not only that but image data must now make it all that way back to earth through solar radiation and hopefully most of the images won't be distorted by cosmic rays.

I never heard of Dawn until a about a week ago when I stumbled across this mission purely by chance.

What`s really interesting is that it has an ION engine propelling it. I thought that was interesting because it was built about 15 years ago.We had the technology to build ION engines 15 years ago I wonder how much more advanced they are now and what other things are using ION engines that we don`t know about yet?

originally posted by: projectvxn
I predict the following.

As soon as photos of Ceres are released people will "discover anomalies". They won't be anything other than jpeg compression artifacts, a rock, or a crap load of ice. But nothing will convince them otherwise.

Artifacts are made up by disinfo agents, you know that.

Months later "anomalies" will turn inexplicably into definitive structures.

The same shapeshifting technology that the reptilans use, you known that.

NASA will be accused of photoshopping all the strip malls, superdomes, and McD's in order to hide the "truth". That truth will somehow turn in to "Alien military bases to observe humanity".

We are the most important species in the universe even though we have crap tech in comparison to anything that would be capable of getting here because they are actually using humans for evil experiments and reproduction hence the abductions. You know that.

Of course they won't realize that NASA has to color correct and make composites of these images in order to see details. And since Ceres is so far away from the sun light will be an issue. Not only that but image data must now make it all that way back to earth through solar radiation and hopefully most of the images won't be distorted by cosmic rays.

Physics!!!! Oh no, we can't have any of that. Perception and altered realities are the only truth. You know that.

I predict that Ceres will become the new Nibiru and thus the start of a myriad end of world scenarios

originally posted by: projectvxn


Of course they won't realize that NASA has to color correct and make composites of these images in order to see details. And since Ceres is so far away from the sun light will be an issue. Not only that but image data must now make it all that way back to earth through solar radiation and hopefully most of the images won't be distorted by cosmic rays.

Ceres is closer in than Pluto, it's the only dwarf planet of the inner solar system, if it can seen by telescope it will be seen by Dawn for sure. I don't think they will be needing to make composites in any close approach either.

originally posted by: Tardacus
I never heard of Dawn until a about a week ago when I stumbled across this mission purely by chance.

What`s really interesting is that it has an ION engine propelling it. I thought that was interesting because it was built about 15 years ago.We had the technology to build ION engines 15 years ago I wonder how much more advanced they are now and what other things are using ION engines that we don`t know about yet?

We had the tech in the 50s. There just wasn't a practical application for them until recent decades.

Not sure why ion propulsion hasn't taken off.

I'm still waiting for the NNPT to be amended to allow research and testing into nuclear propulsion.

a reply to: smurfy

Mars rover images are often made from composites to bring out details that single layer images wouldn't be able to otherwise.

a reply to: projectvxn so true you hit the nail on the Head

What will it discover about Ceres....

1) It's very far away.
2) It's very cold.
3) We'll never put boots on it in our lifetime (current generation).
4) The people of Ceres truly love Macaroni and Cheese (this one might be a bit on the fanciful side).

originally posted by: projectvxn
a reply to: smurfy

Mars rover images are often made from composites to bring out details that single layer images wouldn't be able to otherwise.

Yeah, I know...tell me about it. Their composites and panoramas are something else at times.

a reply to: ProfessorChaos

What will it discover about Ceres....

1) It's very far away.
2) It's very cold.
3) We'll never put boots on it in our lifetime (current generation).
4) The people of Ceres truly love Macaroni and Cheese (this one might be a bit on the fanciful side).

Very cold and the denizens love mac n cheese? Sounds a bit like Canada.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
a reply to: ProfessorChaos

What will it discover about Ceres....

1) It's very far away.
2) It's very cold.
3) We'll never put boots on it in our lifetime (current generation).
4) The people of Ceres truly love Macaroni and Cheese (this one might be a bit on the fanciful side).

Very cold and the denizens love mac n cheese? Sounds a bit like Canada.

That's it! Mystery solved!
Ceres is the extraterrestrial Canada of our solar system.

Who needs NASA?

originally posted by: projectvxn
...And since Ceres is so far away from the sun light will be an issue. Not only that but image data must now make it all that way back to earth through solar radiation and hopefully most of the images won't be distorted by cosmic rays.

Ceres isn't that far away.

Ceres orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. If we can see the sunlight shining on Jupiter (and Jupiter's major moons, which can be seen with a decent pair of binoculars), the the Dawn spacecraft will definitely be able to see the sunlight shining on Ceres.

In fact, if you knew where to look, you can see Ceres from Earth with a moderately powerful pair of binoculars, or even a small kid's hobby telescope that you buy at Walmart or similar store.

An icy patch on Ceres' surface is a tempting explanation for the bright spot. There are some problems though. Water ice is reportedly unstable under the conditions on Ceres, as one poster already mentioned. Perhaps a small patch could exist for a short while, subliming away all the time. It might be replaced by more water seeping up from below, and freezing, only to see the process repeated.
Measuring the width of the images of Ceres, which is known to be 590 miles in diameter, and comparing it to the width of the bright spot, seems to indicate that the later is about 30 miles across. I wonder if a frozen patch, fed by a seepage from within Ceres, and that is subliming away whenever it's exposed to the Sun, could attain such a size. It seems unlikely.
Perhaps a large meteor struck Ceres recently, and exposed some ice below the surface. Maybe this ice hasn't had a chance to all sublime away yet. Again, this seems improbable. A meteor strike large enough to expose a thirty mile wide patch of ice must be a pretty rare occurrence, especially on a small, low gravity object like Ceres.
Then too, there is the apparent marked flickering of the bright spot in the latest animated images. Perhaps this is merely the effect of the low resolution of the images, combined with the brightness of the spot, but then again, perhaps it's not.
For my part, this bright spot seems to be a genuine unknown, not lending itself to a satisfactory explanation, as yet.