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White spots on Ceres - new hi-res images are inconclusive


CaptainPanic

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Or, as Phil Plait said it on his blog Bad Astronomy: What the heck are those spots on Ceres?

 

dawn_ceres_whitespots_june62015.jpg.CROP

 

It appears that NASA also has no clue, as they put up a poll (yes, really) where you can vote what you think this is.

 

Can I say what everybody is thinking, but everybody is afraid to say? Wouldn't it be cool if these are artificial, i.e. made by some life form? I know it is very unrealistic, but all other explanations have their problems too. The funny thing is that at this stage, it cannot be ruled out (yet).

 

Hopefully we'll get better pictures as the Dawn spacecraft goes into lower and lower orbits in the next weeks/months.

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Extraterrestrial deposits; meteor or comet fragments. If you look closely, patches look composed of round shapes, with some overlapping, consistent with head-on impact. If it's icy, shiny stuff that would be quite reflective.

 

post-14463-0-04586400-1434248744.jpg

Edited by StringJunky
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