Dawn gets an eyeful of dwarf planet Ceres (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

19 January 2015 Last updated at 13:26 ET

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The American space agency's Dawn spacecraft is bearing down on Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

New pictures released on Monday will help navigators put the satellite on the correct path to go into orbit around the dwarf planet on 6 March.

The German camera team on Dawn has made a little movie showing the 950km-wide world part-rotating on its axis.

Come the end of the month, the probe's pictures will better those from Hubble.

At the moment, at a separation of just under 400,000km, they are still only 80% as sharp as what the famous space telescope can produce.



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more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30888818
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/

[jakeXT]

1. Mystery White Spot Beckons in Dawn Probe's View of Ceres

The latest views of the dwarf planet Ceres from NASA's Dawn spacecraft reveal hints of craters — and a relatively bright spot that's been a mystery for more than a decade. The black-and-white snapshots were taken on Jan. 13 from a distance of 238,000 miles (383,000 kilometers) and released on Monday. It's still a fuzzy view, with 80 percent of the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope's images of Ceres from 2003-2004, but the picture will get much sharper as Dawn approaches for a rendezvous in March.

The white spot showed up in Hubble's earlier images. Although scientists can't yet say exactly what it is, the best hypothesis is that it's a frozen pool of water ice at the bottom of a crater, clear enough to reflect sunlight. Scientists have detected puffs of water vapor emanating from Ceres that could hint at subsurface reservoirs of liquid water. That naturally leads to speculation about life on Ceres, which is the biggest object in the main asteroid belt as well as the smallest known dwarf planet. Will Ceres' mysteries be solved in March? Stay tuned.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/mystery-white-spot-beckons-dawn-probes-view-ceres-n289076