Ceres Predictions?

[Metryq]

Interesting speculation, but where would it have gotten the boost to "climb" all the way to Ceres?

the same way NASA spacecraft slingshot to Mars ,Jupiter, even Saturn. Venus and the sun..

"Slingshots" are carefully controlled maneuvers that must be executed at exactly the right time. They don't just happen. The bright spots on Ceres could be Snoopy, but I doubt it. I think the freshly-exposed-ice idea is more likely, but even then I don't believe it is ice.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

Not only that, but the crater is 57 miles across. The bigger of the two bright spots appears to be around 10 percent of that, or 5 to 6 miles wide. The module isn't nearly big enough.

 

[Metryq]

Not only that, but the crater is 57 miles across. The bigger of the two bright spots appears to be around 10 percent of that, or 5 to 6 miles wide. The module isn't nearly big enough.

The glare from a reflection could saturate the pixels in a camera and make it appear much bigger than it is. We know that the Moon and comet 67P have surface material as dark as road asphalt. So any gleam of sunlight would be very bright in contrast.

Still, I find the reflection idea hard to swallow, too, as the spots are consistent. With angle of incidence/reflection, I don't see how reflected sunlight could be anything but a momentary flash.

Lunar regolith has a "reflex" behavior similar to that of road signs. Apollo astronauts described seeing "halos" around the heads of their shadows when the sun was behind them, which is exactly the sort of thing one sees with reflex material. But the spots on Ceres are extremely localized, not spread all over the surface.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA images

 

[JES]

The real science is more amazing than all this fantasy. If we're really seeing outgassing water vapor, then Ceres could have a liquid water mantle and possibly even hydrothermal vents, if it's anything like Enceladus. Which raises a genuine possibility that there could be life there.

Or Europa for that matter. I've been wanting someone to send a probe there to determine if there is an ocean beneath that icy crust, and then follow up with a probe that has a submersible that can explore that said ocean, and search for life.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Still, I find the reflection idea hard to swallow, too, as the spots are consistent. With angle of incidence/reflection, I don't see how reflected sunlight could be anything but a momentary flash.

Something like a dome consisting of reflective material would reflect sunlight towards the camera at many different orientations.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Didn't Ganymede got its ocean confirmed these days (and I thought we always knew)? It is another possibility for life. And that ocean is enormous.

 

[Metryq]

Something like a dome consisting of reflective material would reflect sunlight towards the camera at many different orientations.

It would have to be a big dome, like the cryovolcanic plume idea. That would also explain why the spots (if assumed to be at a higher altitude) faded out later than the ground when crossing the terminator.

The problem with the plume idea is that there is no visible shadow from the whatever-it-is. It's possible that any shadow simply was not visible from the distance of the probe and the limit of its camera resolution. We may know more as the probe corrects orbit and comes back in.

Didn't Ganymede got its ocean confirmed these days (and I thought we always knew)?

We always "knew" that comets were "dirty snowballs," but half a dozen closeup probes, including a sample return mission, pulled the rug out from under that idea.

 

[Christopher]

Didn't Ganymede got its ocean confirmed these days (and I thought we always knew)? It is another possibility for life. And that ocean is enormous.

"Always?" Well, no, since it was only theorized in the 1970s. But Galileo confirmed it in the '90s. The new work published last year was a refinement of our theories about the ocean's structure.