Dawn Arrives at Ceres: Coverage

Dawn arrives at Ceres today March 6, 2015. The wait is finally over, ATS!

NASA's Dawn spacecraft will enter the orbit of an alien world on Friday. In the weeks leading up to the historic event, Dawn has been sending back intriguing photos of the dwarf planet Ceres. Located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Ceres is of great interest to astronomers as they gain new insights into the solar system and planetary formation.

Slooh will provide a live stream of Ceres on Friday beginning at 1 p.m. EST. The broadcast will provide live images of the dwarf planet from Australia, and feature a discussion with Dr. Lucy McFadden, co-investigator for the Dawn mission.

Here are a couple of sites providing coverage:
www.ibtimes.com...

www.space.com...

The IB Times site says that coverage begins at 1pm. This should be interesting! What says ATS?

cool beans

now let's see what those 'lights' are all about...

originally posted by: RoScoLaz4
cool beans

now let's see what those 'lights' are all about...

it's the goddess, Demeter, hiding out.

Interesting days to come.

I think a lot of people here are going to be sorely disappointed when the live images don't show any aliens.

Brilliant, thanks for the links. I am looking forward to the threads on here when the bright spots turn out to be water/ice. Or portholes to the underworld.
x

a reply to: and14263

Of course that's what we will be told. But truth isn't in the cards. Someday...

a reply to: lostbook
Here's a direct link to the Slooh community observatory live stream for when it starts...It's saying 6PM GMT for those in UK/EU right now. so 2 and a half hours from me clicking 'reply'

originally posted by: RoScoLaz4
cool beans

now let's see what those 'lights' are all about...

Perhaps colonies of bioluminescent organisms like Dinoflagellates found here on Earth.

Huge numbers of bioluminescent dinoflagellates creating phosphorescence in breaking waves


Wouldn't that be interesting

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
I think a lot of people here are going to be sorely disappointed when the live images don't show any aliens.

I also think they will be disappointed that, due to the failure of two of its reaction wheels (which happened a few years ago), Dawn may not be in position/orientation to take the best images of Ceres until its orbit spirals closer-- which will be in the next couple of weeks. I'm sure there will be images, but maybe not yet the full gamut of images.

The reaction wheels are what would normally be used to orient the probe in the direction they want, but without the wheels the only way to orient the craft is with the attitude control thrusters (which are different than the main ion engines). However, the attitude control thrusters have only a limited supply of hydrazine fuel, and that means that changes in orientation of the craft is limited.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People
Oh, that is disappointing to read, I'll just hope they get lucky.

originally posted by: grainofsand
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People
Oh, that is disappointing to read, I'll just hope they get lucky.

The mission engineers have gotten creative in figuring ways that Dawn will eventually put itself in all of the correct orientations needed to get all of the images and data they want and also the correct orientations to transmit those images and data back to Earth by using the attitude control thrusters only a minimal amount, but it may take more time than it would if they had the use of the reaction wheels at their disposal.

I don't think the science will be limited -- just a bit harder to do.

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance
I think a lot of people here are going to be sorely disappointed when the live images don't show any aliens.

Even if there was something there, they will just block it out like they do with any other images.

ID

Do you think NASA has received some "other" pics from Dawn that show the surface?

I wonder what they show?

I meen that after those mysterious bright spots were seen, why haven't we seen any more?

I'm sure that if there were more bright spots they would share them. Yes?

a reply to: ItalianDressing

Even if there was something there, they will just block it out like they do with any other images.

Why did they release the images in the first place if that were the case , they could have just photoshopped the bright spots out of the images.

originally posted by: Ultralight
a reply to: and14263

Of course that's what we will be told. But truth isn't in the cards. Someday...

Yes because the truth isn't the truth unless it's what you want to hear of course. Unless it's an alien city 'they' must be hiding the 'truth'!!
I could assure you that nothing is being 'concealed' or kept secret (apart from maybe some science data until the end of the proprietary period so that the teams responsible for the relevant instruments get to make their discoveries first), but what's the point..

If it makes you feel any better I'm sure there's life out there and I can't think of anyone I know (and I know a lot of scientists and engineers that work in space) that doesn't think there is likely to be other life out there too. We're all hoping and looking you know, some of the near future missions to some of the moons of the solar system are hopeful of finding life. You and everyone else will be one of the first to know if they do!

If you're interested you should get involved more with the actual space and citizen science communities and spend less time on the click-bait sensationalist space conspiracy type sites trying to convince you that stuffs being kept from you. :-)

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: ItalianDressing

Even if there was something there, they will just block it out like they do with any other images.

Why did they release the images in the first place if that were the case , they could have just photoshopprd the bright spots out of the images.

Because some people think this is some big game with clues or something. Like the plot of a Hollywood movie like 'National Treasure', 'Conspiracy Theory', etc.

Sad thing is that there is so much people could be taking part in. Data is available from missions either in near real time or after any proprietary period that's been set in a raw form usually. If you don't have the knowledge and expertise to process it there are many citizen science projects out there doing all sorts of things. Lots of ordinary people have managed to discover new objects, planets, etc.
Instead of piling money into sham websites, books, DVDs, etc all telling you, quite frankly, a crock of s**t you could help fund organisations like SETI so they can continue with projects. You can also just donate some time in processing data or even developing new algorithms:

SETI Live

SETI Quest

Planet Hunters

Zooniverse

Ordinary people have made significant discoveries, even ending up with their name son scientific papers, in the press and even becoming mini-celebrities.

Yale astronomers, along with citizen scientists from the Planet Hunter program, recently discovered a small planet that has a strange orbiting schedule.

Hanny's Voorwerp

A Newly Confirmed Planet and 42 Additional Planet Candidates

Just so much people could be taking part in and actually helping with...

And as I said, there are data repositories that anyone can access for pretty much all missions containing countless terabytes of data. There is literally so much that only a tiny fraction of most if not all missions has been fully analysed and new discoveries are being made all of the time. It's really quite incredible.

Or..

You can just watch YouTube videos made by ad whores telling you a really cool story, that has no foundation in reality.

originally posted by: AgentSmith
Or..

You can just watch YouTube videos made by ad whores telling you a really cool story, that has no foundation in reality.

But that's so much more "kewl" -- therefore more likely to be the truth.

originally posted by: gortex Wouldn't that be interesting

not half. it would be a sensation