Since NASA's Dawn spacecraft arrived at the dwarf planet known as Ceres, strange bright spots appearing inside a crater have mystified mission managers.
Revealed in a news release Wednesday, NASA shared new photos of the bright spots in great detail. Dawn has photographed the crater where the spots originate several times, gaining a new perspective every time NASA lowers its orbit.
"The bright spots are much brighter than the rest of Ceres' surface, and tend to appear overexposed in most images," NASA said in its release. 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."
Dawn snapped the photo at an altitude of 915 miles and the image's resolution of 450 feet per pixel is some three times better than the most recent one taken in June.
"Dawn has transformed what was so recently a few bright dots into a complex and beautiful, gleaming landscape," Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer and mission director based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in another news release. "Soon, the scientific analysis will reveal the geological and chemical nature of this mysterious and mesmerizing extraterrestrial scenery."
Dawn arrived at Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, in March, making it the first spacecraft to ever orbit a dwarf planet.
