Are bright spots on Ceres electric?
Image credit: TW
In March, the NASA Dawn Spacecraft entered the orbit of the mysterious dwarf planet Ceres, with the craft scheduled to begin sending images to Earth later this month.
For several weeks, surprising and unexplained bright spots within a crater on the planet’s surface have generated enormous buzz in popular media. While it's too early to form any final conclusions about the nature of the mysterious phenomena, here we explore the possibility that the bright spots are electrical in nature.
- NASA's Official Dawn Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/nasa_dawn
- 2011 paper of Russian scientist Subhon Ibadov cited in this video: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/…
- 2013 Space News on asteroid with six comet tails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9HPV…
Video courtesy of The Thunderbolts Project
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
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it almost looks as if the larger bright spot is reflecting off the side of the crater. I think the light source is below the surface but nobody answered my question about Ceres rotation on its axis. my question is, “Do these spots shine when they are on the dark side of Ceres”?
if so, I’m right.
This article got mentioned and linked from:
NASA is about to solve a major mystery about dwarf planet Ceres
http://www.businessinsider.sg/what-are-ceres-mysterious-bright-spots-2015-4/