NASA's Dawn probe captured stunning new images of bright spots in the little planet of Ceres. Reports have it that they didn't see the Little Prince in those spots as scientists believe that it is a crater with briny materials that are bubbling up.
The probe somehow went higher into the small planet to capture a different angle and it snapped an image of the clearest view of Ceres, Gizmodo reported. What the images revealed are the Occator Crater and the planet's interesting bright surface look.
Dawn arrived at Ceres back in the spring of 2015. These new images were captured in its fifth orbiting around a dwarf planet. This angle has a different view, since the sun shines on this part of the planet.
One of the images shows the central bright part of the huge Occator Crater, which is the brightest on the small planet, Scientific American reported. The crater is 57 miles wide and is 2.5 miles deep. To put it in perspective, it is 77 times bigger than the Barringer Crater located in Arizona. Dawn captured the image in October while it was 920 miles above the planet's surface.
Scientists suspect that the images show certain briny materials that are creating bubbles due to geological activities. These liquid materials would later on sublimate away with only salt left in the area. Asteroids hitting the planet could also lead to these upwelling, and some scientists believe this is what happened with the Occator Crater.
NASA scientists also revealed a colored image of the photo to show how Ceres would look like to the human eye. The German Aerospace Center in Berlin is one of the major contributors that made it possible for Dawn to capture these amazing images. The technology also allows scientists to calculate how the planet reflects various wavelengths of light.
