{"id":18493,"date":"2016-03-26T01:00:49","date_gmt":"2016-03-26T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=18493"},"modified":"2016-03-26T11:05:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-26T21:05:53","slug":"ceres-up-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=18493","title":{"rendered":"Ceres Up Close"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dawn has been in orbit around Ceres<\/a> for over a year now, having entered orbit back on March 6th, 2015. Most of the dwarf planet has been photographed and mapped in high resolution now, creating beautiful imagery that reveals a great deal of interesting terrian. As we have seen with other dwarf planets like Pluto, these little worlds are surprisingly dynamic places, hardly the dead rocks one might have expected.<\/p>\n

The bright features in Occator crater have been revealed to be some sort of cryovolcano. While not certain, the bright is likely to be water ice, or perhaps a briny, salt and water mixture. There has even been some evidence of vapor observed over the crater, possibly from sublimating ices.<\/p>\n

I am sure this is a large disappointment to those who claimed it was some sort of alien base<\/a>. Not that this has stopped the claims, they are just more modest in size. You can find YouTube videos of folks combing through the high resolution images<\/a> and claiming any little feature that is slightly regular looking is some alien artifact.<\/p>\n

More enjoyable to watch is a JPL video pointing out the highlights of Ceres…<\/p>\n