Astronomy Picture of the Day
August 8, 2015

Features of 1-Ceres (White Spots - EDM n. 1)
Features of 1-Ceres (White Spots - EDM n. 1)

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA and Dr Paolo C. Fienga for the additional process. and color.

This Extra Detail Magnification (or "EDM", for short) of a (more than relatively) small portion of the Dwarf-Planet named 1-Ceres, taken by the NASA - Dawn Spacecraft on June, 25, 2015, shows us, once again (see, if you wish, the APODs of July, 3rd, 2015 and August, 7th, 2015), several - always intriguing and largely unknown, as far as their nature and origin is concerned - bright White Spots.


Are these White Spots made of Water Ice coming from the Sub-Surface of 1-Ceres? Or, maybe, the Material which formed (---> made) them came directly from the Impacting Object (perhaps a Comet - such as a Celestial Object made out of "dirty Water Ice", basically)? Or, last but not least, we are looking at some kind of some (still) unknown bright Mineral that is - in a way - "original and common", on 1-Ceres? Nobody knows for sure. Yet....


Just out of curiosity, this specific frame was obtained from an altitude of approx. 2700 miles (such as about 4345,218 Km).  The Resolution here is roughly 1400 feet (such as approx. 426,72 meters) per pixel.


This image (which is a crop taken from an Original NASA - Dawn Spacecraft's b/w and NON Map-Projected frame published on the NASA - Planetary Photojournal with the ID n. PIA 19615 - Dawn Survey Orbit Image 42) has been additionally processed, magnified to aid the visibility of the details, contrast enhanced and sharpened, Gamma corrected and then colorized (according to an educated guess carried out by Dr Paolo C. Fienga-LXTT-IPF) in Absolute Natural Colors (such as the colors that a normal human eye would actually perceive if someone were onboard the NASA - Dawn Spacecraft and then looked ahead, towards the Surface of 1-Ceres), by using an original technique created - and, in time, dramatically improved - by the Lunar Explorer Italia Team.



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