
Ceres' Deepening Mysteries - ca98am79
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/marc-rayman/0225-dawn-journal-ceres-deepening-mysteries.html
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kowdermeister
"Dawn is scheduled to enter Ceres orbit on March 6, 2015" Only a few days left
to learn more and we will have a bunch of data later this year.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_%28spacecraft%29#Ceres_orb...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_%28spacecraft%29#Ceres_orbit)

It would be the most amazing thing if another spot would turn on on the other
side of the center one :)

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politician
Comparison of the Earth, Moon, and Ceres.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ceres_Earth_Moon_Compariso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ceres_Earth_Moon_Comparison.png)

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leke
Well if you wanted to send a message to people in a solar system, you could
put something on a moon like this. Once they were advanced enough to find it,
they would probably understand it.

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novaleaf
except your message would be pulverized by impacts over the millions of years
it lies in wait.

A better candidate would be Luna, or some other body that has a cleared orbit.

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keyle
I'd love the crazy theories to come out about those white spots. Anyone?

At first glance, it looks linked to the center of that massive crater. Could
it be an active volcano of sorts?

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fit2rule
Abandoned, but fully operational, alien base. We send humans there, land
successfully, discover we are not alone in the Universe, and Humanity is
united behind the effort to gain deeper understanding of ourselves. Also,
there's a hidden door somewhere in the base that leads deeper into the
interior of Ceres, where we discover .. the whole thing was a station.

A man can dream.

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ridgeguy
In Alastair Reynold's scifi novel Pushing Ice, it wasn't Ceres, but another
body in our solar system that with an apparent origin similar to what you've
imagined...and behavior just too interesting for the curious primates to
ignore...

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IndianAstronaut
Eon was another good book which investigated this possibility of an alien rock
orbiting earth.

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kendallpark
> Dawn will not come this close to its permanent partner again for six weeks.
> Well before then, it will be taken firmly and forever into Ceres’ gentle
> gravitational hold.

<3 For some reason I love this excerpt. It humanizes the scientific voyage.

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jlebrech
I'm increasingly perplexed by how long it's taking to take a higher resolution
picture of ceres

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maxst
It's approaching very slowly, at bicycle speed.

From the article, Ceres diameter:

Mar 1 : 207 pixels

Apr 10 : 306 pixels

Apr 14 : 453 pixels

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jlebrech
i meant over the years, not using the same camera.

