The bright spots on Ceres imaged by the dawn spacecraft

This image taken from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres shows the very bright patches of material in the crater Occator and elsewhere. New observations using the HARPS spectrograph on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla in Chile have revealed unexpected daily changes on these spots, suggesting that they change under the influence of sunlight.

Credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

About the Image

Id:eso1609b
Type:Planetary
Release date:16 March 2016, 12:00
Related releases:eso1609
Size:1280 x 1280 px

About the Object

Type:Solar System : Planet : Feature : Surface
Category:Solar System

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