Fly over Ceres’ Colossal Crater and Bright Spots in Incredible Video

Researchers from the Institute of Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, or DLR) have produced a dramatic 3D animation that simulates a flight over Occator, one of the largest craters on the dwarf planet Ceres.

Occator crater is a real eye-catcher: with a diameter of 57 miles (92 km), it is larger than Tycho crater on the Moon — which appears like a bright spot when seen with the naked eye.

Occator’s steep walls stand tall at over 1.4 miles (2 km), higher than the North face of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps.

And mysterious bright spots in its interior have triggered a debate regarding their nature and origin among planetary scientists around the world.

“The impact that produced Occator probably created a connection to the lower strata — which might have caused a mixture of ice, mud and salt to rise to the surface through crevices in the crust,” said Dr. Ralf Jaumann, manager for Dawn’s camera team at DLR.

“The light-colored, calcareous salt on the surface of Ceres is a residue of this process.”

“It was like a kind of volcanic activity — but in this case it did not involve molten rock, but a liquid melted ice and mud mixture.”

With a diameter of 57 miles (92 km), Occator crater is larger than Tycho crater on the Moon. Its steep walls stand tall at over 1.4 miles (2 km), higher than the North face of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps. The origin and nature of the bright spots in its interior is still not clear. Image credit: DLR.

A video animation produced by Dr. Jaumann and colleagues simulates a flight over this unique crater.

The video is based on observations of Ceres that were taken from Dawn’s low altitude mapping orbit (LAMO), at an altitude of 230 miles (375 km).

Data from 548 images are combined into the video.

The bright, reflective regions have now been given their own names: the particularly eye-catching region at the heart of Occator with light spots and fissured bulge at its center has been named ‘Cerealia Facula,’ while the slightly less reflective patches to the east are called ‘Vinalia Faculae.’

“Not all of the large craters on Ceres exhibit these saline deposits that were clearly recognizable in Occator as Dawn approached the celestial body,” DLR researchers said.

“So it is possible that the impact at this particular site disturbed materials that are probably not present in other large craters,” Dr. Jaumann added.

On the surface, the melted ice immediately transitioned into the gaseous state, leaving mud and salts on the surface. This incident occurred around 18 million years ago — the recent past in a geological timeframe.

Another theory suggests that the heat generated during impact caused the crustal material to melt, triggering hydrothermal alterations of the material and hence the formation of salts.

The detailed results and other images were presented Dec. 15 at the 2016 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, CA.

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Thomas Roatsch et al. High-resolution Ceres LAMO atlas derived from Dawn FC images. 2016 AGU Fall Meeting, abstract # P43C-2120

This article is based on a press-release from the German Aerospace Center.