Since the arrival of the Dawn spacecraft, scientists have been hard at work beginning their studies of the planet that was never meant to be. When it first started its approach, the scientific community was abuzz as the first pictures showed bright spots on the surface. Now, scientists believe that these bright spots could possibly be volcanoes of ice. According to scientists, these volcanoes seem to be emitting a stream of ice into space.
Volcanoes aren't the only thing scientists believe they have discovered. One image from the Dawn spacecraft appears to reveal a possible life-giving ocean located beneath the surface of the dwarf planet. In addition, scientists said that the plumes in the pictures look like ice catching patches of sunlight.
The theory of a possible volcano was presented by scientists at the Lunar and Planetary Science conference held just outside of Houston. Before they can definitively say that there is, in fact, a volcano scientists must first wait for more data from Dawn as it emerges from the dark side of Ceres.
For quite some time scientists have believed there to be ice on Ceres. Eleven years ago, the Hubble telescope captures images of Ceres with what appeared to be water ice on it and just last year the Herschel Space Observatory said they found possible evidence of water vapor on the dwarf planet. Then last February, when Dawn snapped its first pictures of Ceres, two bright spots were observed inside one of the craters.
Dawn will finally begin to orbit Ceres tomorrow and will start gathering even more data. Scientists hope that this data will reveal even more evidence on the presence of water during its study.
According to Andreas Nathues, camera supervisor of Dawn, "We believe this could be some kind of outgassing."
"Could the bright spot be an icy plume caused by the vaporization of Ceres' surface as it turns towards the sun's heat, and then dropping away as night falls?" wrote Monica Grady, who is a professor of planetary and space sciences at the Open University and suspects that Ceres is showing signs of cometary activity. "Corridor talk at the conference speculates that Ceres might be closer to a comet than the asteroid it is usually regarded as."
Dawn was first launched back in 2007 and became the first vessel to visit to bodies in our solar system after it first stopped at Vesta, spending time studying this dwarf planet as well. Now, after traveling 3.1 billion miles, it will finally settle above Ceres for its mission there as scientists attempt to learn more about the early life of our solar system.
