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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 09 2016, @09:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the because-it's-there dept.

An unexpected mountain has been discovered on Ceres in images sent by NASA's Dawn orbiter:

One year ago, on March 6, 2015, NASA's Dawn spacecraft slid gently into orbit around Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Since then, the spacecraft has delivered a wealth of images and other data that open an exciting new window to the previously unexplored dwarf planet.

"Ceres has defied our expectations and surprised us in many ways, thanks to a year's worth of data from Dawn. We are hard at work on the mysteries the spacecraft has presented to us," said Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator for the mission, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Among Ceres' most enigmatic features is a tall mountain the Dawn team named Ahuna Mons. This mountain appeared as a small, bright-sided bump on the surface as early as February 2015 from a distance of 29,000 miles (46,000 kilometers), before Dawn was captured into orbit. As Dawn circled Ceres at increasingly lower altitudes, the shape of this mysterious feature began to come into focus. From afar, Ahuna Mons looked to be pyramid-shaped, but upon closer inspection, it is best described as a dome with smooth, steep walls.

Dawn's latest images of Ahuna Mons, taken 120 times closer than in February 2015, reveal that this mountain has a lot of bright material on some of its slopes, and less on others. On its steepest side, it is about 3 miles (5 kilometers) high. The mountain has an average overall height of 2.5 miles (4 kilometers). It rises higher than Washington's Mount Rainier and California's Mount Whitney. Scientists are beginning to identify other features on Ceres that could be similar in nature to Ahuna Mons, but none is as tall and well-defined as this mountain.

"No one expected a mountain on Ceres, especially one like Ahuna Mons," said Chris Russell, Dawn's principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We still do not have a satisfactory model to explain how it formed."


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 09 2016, @10:16PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday March 09 2016, @10:16PM (#316271) Journal

    surprise and fear!

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday March 10 2016, @12:34AM

    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday March 10 2016, @12:34AM (#316342)

    And a fanatical devotion to NASA!

    --
    It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
    • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by archfeld on Thursday March 10 2016, @01:39AM

      by archfeld (4650) <treboreel@live.com> on Thursday March 10 2016, @01:39AM (#316362) Journal

      Is it a big comfy mountain with soft cushions ?

      --
      For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 14 2016, @03:24AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 14 2016, @03:24AM (#317833)

        Message for you sire; I guess all Flying Circus Spanish Inquisition lines are not equal...