Strange shiny, conical, enormously tall mountain on Ceres

originally posted by: funbox
a reply to: Blue Shift

that's one big rover then, shouldn't there be colossus tracks nearby ?

funbox

Not necessarily. If it's an excavator, it could have been deployed to its designation via aircraft. We also don't know what's under the blatant brushing.

a reply to: IlluminatiTechnician

Agreed that part of the image appears to have been blurred out.

Maybe it's a four mile high lightning rod.

That makes as much sense as anything else.

originally posted by: BlackProject

originally posted by: AshOnMyTomatoes
The Dawn spacecraft has returned some of the highest-resolution images of the surface of Ceres yet, and it seems the closer look we get, the more mysteries we find.

Know what I am more curious about? The fact that they have high resolution images of this area but not of the very obvious bright spots.

Go on NASA, show us some little stones at the side of the mountain looking area.... God forbid showing us what we all are waiting to hear more from.

I don't think it is necessarily NASA that won't let us see the images, but elements from higher agencies telling them what and what not to show..but that is a whole other topic...

Having completed cartographic and photogrammetry projects for the NASA Appolo Lunar Landing Missions, and have seen a lot of off world formations of unusual nature, I have never seen any anomoly quite like this 4 mile high mountain with partially bright sides with sharp edges, as well as the mysterious bright spots in the other areas.

I'll throw out this SWAG ; since we have a mountain of materal seeming out of place from the surroundings and it is not a crater, possibly it was a rouge metalic metor that collided at a matching speed and trajectory with a minimal impact angled from the shiny side where most of the thermal energy would be released; enough to leave a mountain with defined edges of the former metallic metor, instead of a high impact crater. The metor could have been coated with nonmetallic debris that melted off on the impact thermal energy; leaving a shiny melted surface, more so near the well defined impact zone at and above ground level.

The sharp edged bottom at the surface makes it a real mystery. It just looks like it was inserted into the surface.

Just a theory, ,,, so have at it.

originally posted by: lunarcartographer
Having completed cartographic and photogrammetry projects for the NASA Appolo Lunar Landing Missions, and have seen a lot of off world formations of unusual nature, I have never seen any anomoly quite like this 4 mile high mountain with partially bright sides with sharp edges, as well as the mysterious bright spots in the other areas.

I'll throw out this SWAG ; since we have a mountain of materal seeming out of place from the surroundings and it is not a crater, possibly it was a rouge metalic metor that collided at a matching speed and trajectory with a minimal impact; enough to leave a mountain with defined edges of the former metallic metor, instead of a high impact crater. The metor could have been coated with nonmetallic debris that melted off on the impact energy; leaving a shiny melted surface, more so near the well defined impact zone at and above ground level.

The sharp edged bottom at the surface makes it a real mystery. It just looks like it was inserted into the surface.

Just a theory, ,,, so have at it.

problem with that is, molten metal doesn't harden into shiny metal. There's typically slag and oxidization. I don't know though, there isn't really an atmosphere on Ceres, so perhaps the cooling of metal acts differently. You're right though, I've never seen anything like this either. I'm going to call it a "cryovolcanic inclusion" for now, on the assumption that it is an ice formation that has somehow thrust its way up through the surrounding crust, like Devil's Tower I mentioned earlier.

a reply to: AshOnMyTomatoes
Thanks for the reply, we are definately looking at something new and unusual.

"I'm going to call it a "cryovolcanic inclusion" for now, on the assumption that it is an ice formation that has somehow thrust its way up through the surrounding crust, like Devil's Tower I mentioned earlier. "

As good a call as mine or any other. The problem I see with that is the well defined lower edge. Then again, I see nothing thrown out here that satisfies the question of what we are seeing in the image.

A real mystery.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: Pilgrum
C,mon it's a crater, not a mountain and easily determined if you check the light and shadows in nearby craters with elevated centres. My thought is it's a form of glass created in the heat of a massive high speed impact which is angled such that any loose material like dust simply slides to the bottom keeping the 'glass' exposed.

All theory of course

No.

The shadow is on the opposite side of the feature relative to the crater below it. So the feature in question is a mountain:

Here it is from another angle:

Who cares about that dinky bump, how did Disney get that billboarded????

a reply to: AshOnMyTomatoes

This thing is just BIZARRE. When you look at the image, you notice a couple things. First, the formation is surrounded by terrain that is largely undisturbed by its presence, ie, it doesnt look like it popped up out of the ground. But it looks like a relatively new feature. Also the crater next to it looks fresh, you have to wonder how an impact so close to that hill did not obliterate part of it. So it seems to imply this hill is a new feature on an old surface. But I cant for the life of me think of a mechanism that would form it without affecting the surrounding terrain. It could be some kind of hot spring where mineral water is coming up from inside ceres, immediately sublimating, and leaving the hill like feature. Or maybe it is a comet that just bumped into ceres and stuck in the side of it at very low speed. God, I hope they get better pictures of this thing!!!!

a reply to: Pilgrum

Couldn't have said it better. I'd prefer it not be something as mundane (if you will) but Occam's Razor kind of drives my train of thought on this one.

Zoomed in on, the top of the mountain seems to have a central spot where flow lines down the mountain seem to originate. To me that seems like it might be some sort of ice volcano, always adding material down the sides of the mountain.

The reflectivity of the slopes could very well indicate an ice of some sort. Would a spetrograph of that area indicate what kind of ice?

a reply to: FyreByrd

Dilithium crystals, perhaps?

I find this really interesting, because they look like deposits of a fairly pure metallic compound in an otherwise chalky or carbonaceous mass. Instead of cratering like the softer surrounding material, pieces of it would spall off as it's likely a lot harder than whatever it is that's hitting it. If that's the case, might be really good news for anyone considering asteroid mining. Some metal deposits may be of such a pure ore that little or no refining may be needed. Could be close enough to steel or other typically man-made alloys on Earth that you could melt, form, and use as-is.

But yeah, tl;dr: Looks like a glint of bare polished metal exposed and sticking out of a rocky mass.

Ahem.... I have it on the 'highest authority' that all these circular indentations typically referenced as 'crators' are actually mining sites. The mining machines recovery paths are circular, like we do with irrigation pipe in the Southwest US. Our sector was heavily mined around our Jurassic period. Our surface resources were removed in those ages.

There is a class action suit with the 'Galactic Federation' to recover the stolen wealth circles however but finalization of that may take some time.

a reply to: Plotus

Is this "authority" the town drunk?

a reply to: AshOnMyTomatoes

I found it!!!

FOUNDED!!!

it's a space barnacle.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
Big, shiny asteroid that slowly hit the surface and then flipped over?

Ah Ha, someone else with my general idea...

a 4 mile large asteroid gently landed on the surface of Ceres, it parked rather than slammed into the surface, thus avoiding a crater...

the 4 mile high ball of material shed off a lot of the loose dirt & stony surface material at set-down (Ceres & the asteroid were both traveling in the exact direction thus making a 100MPH impact possible)

as you see in one enhanced image, there are impacts by smaller objects on the very top of this 4 mile pile of rubble so it has been there for possibly eons ... so Ceres gravity and the later impacts could have shaken off any other loose rubble from the sides of the aggregate ball of rubble mountain and results in the 45° sloped sides of the elevated mound of space material...

which would account for the mountain looking like 'the devils tower", or any number of those crumbled mountains in Monument Valley with rubble making a 'skirt' around those pinnacles...
the debris field, 'skirt' of rubble does not necessarily have to completely surround the top-of-the-mountain of rock/dirt in a truly conical result from a birds eye view

not all meteorites need to be traveling 17k-35k mph like the debris the Earth encounters.... the Asteroid belt has millions of those slow-motion bumps between objects every year...I think we are just seeing an exceptional example, preserved in a vacuum

originally posted by: AshOnMyTomatoes

?

shout out to this astute poster


also cite openminded2011

originally posted by: [post=19745071]St

delete dbl post

edit on th31144068803227072015 by St Udio because: (no reason given)

Pretty soon we'll have d-bags climbing that mountain, too ... and never shutting up about it.

But cool never the less.

a reply to: AshOnMyTomatoes

Well it is something, that's certain.

If we extrapolate this...thing to formations found on Earth it seems it could be natural, you mentioned the devils tower and I'll raise you the Giants causeway in Ireland.



It seems unnatural but it is anything but, maybe this 'mountain' is the same. It's fun to speculate though.