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Probe Dawn has sent new photos of Ceres



Dawn's interplanetary probe in March of this year is to enter the orbit of the dwarf planet Ceres. But now the probe is closer to the target than ever: the distance to the planetoid is only 145 thousand kilometers. It is logical that the probe now has more opportunities for photographing the surface of the planet.

Not so long ago, astronomers were content with only a misty speck, a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Now, astronomers have relatively detailed images of the surface of a planetoid, in which even craters are visible.

In the region of the South Pole of Ceres, one can see a clear impact crater, well formed and therefore visible in the photo.
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In addition, the picture shows a mysterious bright spot, which was seen by scientists in previous shots. Until now, this spot has not disappeared anywhere, and I would like to hope that as the probe approaches Ceres, the situation will become clearer. Moreover, more bright specks are now visible - probably, it could be the emergence of rocks to the surface, or the accumulation of ice.

As mentioned above, at the moment these images are the clearest pictures of Ceres, where 1 pixel = 14 kilometers.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/376209/


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