Is the Mysterious Light on This Dwarf Planet a Sign of Life?
Here are the odds—and a lot of other very cool stuff
Two bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres have captured astronomers' attention.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDAThis article is for subscribers only.
A NASA spacecraft has detected strange bright spots on the surface of Ceres, the dwarf planet it is expected to begin orbiting on Friday.
The early images are just a frustrating teaser. Scientists won’t know more about the mysterious light until NASA’s Dawn spacecraft starts taking pictures from closer to the orb’s surface in April. Dawn is currently about 25,000 miles away from Ceres, nearing the end of an eight-year journey of 260 million miles to the asteroid belt, about three times as far from the sun as earth is.