Dawn Spacecraft Gets a Better Look At Ceres' Bizarre 'White Spots'

StartsWithABang writes: Since its discovery as the first asteroid more than 200 years ago, Ceres has been one of the most poorly understood objects in the Solar System as even imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope is unable to resolve very much. But NASA's Dawn mission, since moving on from Vesta, has begun to map Ceres, constructing the highest resolution global map ever, with better data to come. The greatest mystery so far are two bright white spots at the bottom of a deep crater, brighter and more reflective than anything else on the planet's surface. Right now, three leading possibilities for the origin of these features exist, with Dawn possessing the capabilities to teach us which one (if any) is correct, hopefully by the end of the year!

Comments

"Three Leading Possibilities"

[sexconker]

No need to click - the "three leading possibilities" are exactly what you guessed:
  - Ice
  - Dry Ice
  - Different rocks that have a different albedo

If you only guessed "ice" and "different rocks" you still get full credit.

Re:Spectrograph?

[cusco]

Yes, they do, and no, they're not.