NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captures stunning new images of dwarf planet Ceres
NASA's mission director said: "This image captures the wonder of soaring above this fascinating, unique world that Dawn is the first to explore"
THESE are the stunning new images of dwarf planet Ceres, captured by NASA's spacecraft Dawn.
In one of the pictures, a burst of light can be seen coming from Ceres' Occator Crater which is 57 miles wide, and 2.5 miles deep.
This picture was taken in October as the Dawn probe was just 920 miles above the dwarf planet's surface, and NASA has only just decided to reveal it.
Experts believe the bright spots which have been pictured on Ceres are from salty liquid which bubbles to the surface during geologic activity, or an asteroid crashing into its surface.
Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer and mission director, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: "This image captures the wonder of soaring above this fascinating, unique world that Dawn is the first to explore."
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The Dawn spacecraft launched in 2007.
It first travelled to Vesta, before setting course for Ceres in September 2012 and using its gamma ray and neutron spectrometer to analyse its surroundings before reporting back to NASA.
Dawn has been studying the dwarf planet - which was discovered by mathematician, and astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi on January 1, 1801 - for eight months.
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