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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!
Full disclosure, I started up a bbs last year running on Synchronet. Synchronet has a javascript engine, and people have been writing new games using some cool new libraries that allow you to do things that were unimaginable back in the day (always could use more competent developers). Sure, LORD's still being played, but there are some cooler games that are beyond that. We've got sprite based games, someone just released a version of "Lemmings" for Synchronet BBS (known as "Lemons"). BBS's communicating in real time through our BBS alliance (http://centerofawareness.net/). Lots of cool stuff. If you feel like checking any of this stuff out, shameless plug for the board : telnet://futureland.grudgemirror.com ... It's a little different than the traditional BBS with all its custom mods. Much more dynamic than the static menus of BBSs' of yesteryear. We've got a lot of new stuff, and some of the old classics. Also, bbsnexus.com is a kind of cool site where you can browse BBS's in the browser without having to install a better terminal for BBS display or tweek your settings to make ansi graphics install nice.