CaptainPanic Posted June 11, 2015 Posted June 11, 2015 Or, as Phil Plait said it on his blog Bad Astronomy: What the heck are those spots on Ceres? 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. 2
Moontanman Posted June 14, 2015 Posted June 14, 2015 (edited) It would be highly ironic, in one report NASA reported the spots continued to glow after they rotated into shadow. Edited June 14, 2015 by Moontanman 2
StringJunky Posted June 14, 2015 Posted June 14, 2015 (edited) 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. Edited June 14, 2015 by StringJunky
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