NASA Reveals Closest Look at Ceres’ Mysterious Bright Spots

The latest image of the bright spot reveals the glow not as a bright blur, as early images did, but an intricate landscape of reflection.

The white spots are on the floor of the Occator crater, which is ringed by a ridge that measures as much as a mile high above the surface of Ceres.

“The brightest spots on the dwarf planet Ceres gleam with mystery in new views delivered by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft”, mission scientists write in the animation’s description. Now that New Horizons is well on its way to the outer edges of the Solar System – and we’re stuck waiting to see the images it took – some of the spotlight is back on Ceres. These closest-yet views of Occator crater, with a resolution of 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel, give scientists a deeper perspective on these very unusual features.

This view is a composite of two images of Occator: one using a short exposure that captures the detail in the bright spots, and one where the background surface is captured at normal exposure.

“Soon, the scientific analysis will reveal the geological and chemical nature of this mysterious and mesmerizing extraterrestrial scenery”, promises researcher Marc Rayman.

The minor planet, which lies between Mars and Jupiter, is a focus of NASA’s Dawn mission. The craft already finished two other cycles from this altitude, and it will continue to map Ceres’ surface about six times through the course of the next two months, the space agency added. By doing this at slightly different angles, scientists will be able to construct more thorough 3D maps, according to NASA.

The probe made it into orbit around the body in March 2015 after spending more than a year gathering data about the protoplanet Vesta, another large object in the asteroid belt.