REAL LIFE NEWS: HAZE APPEARS OVER BRIGHT SPOTS ON CERES
by Hazed
“There’s a bright silver haze on the asteroid, there’s a bright silver haze on the asteroid…”*
I said haze, not Hazed!
Ever since the Dawn spacecraft approached Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system, we’ve been intrigued by some bright spots that appear on its surface. Now the probe has spotted a hazed that appears from time to time in a crater above those spots.
This suggests that those bright spots “could be providing some atmosphere in this particular region of Ceres”, according to Christopher Russell, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
So far, this haze has only been seen in one location: a crater called Occator. It has a large bright area at its centre and several smaller spots nearby. Scientists speculated that the bright spots could have been made of ice, evaporated salts or minerals, or something completely different that they hadn’t thought of! But the sighting of the haze, which covers about half the crater and stops at the rim, suggests sublimating ice.
Further examination from Dawn’s infrared spectrometer may yield some answers.
