The Main Asteroid Belt, that circles our Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, is the domain of a multitude of small, rocky bodies that are close kin to those ancient objects that congealed together in our primordial Solar System to form the four major inner planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. It has been known for decades that Ceres is the largest asteroid in our Solar System. However, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) reclassified Ceres as a dwarf planet because of its jumbo size. A dwarf planet is a Solar System denizen that is smaller than a major planet--but larger than an asteroid. The IAU is the governing organization responsible for the designation of planetary objects. In January 2014, a team of astronomers, using the Herschel Space Observatory, announced that they had made the first definite discovery of water vapor on Ceres--the roundest body in the Main Asteroid Belt. This means that Ceres is big enough for gravity to have squeezed it into a round ball!
Herschel is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission that has made important contributions to NASA. Plumes of water vapor are believed to be hurled up periodically from Ceres when areas of its icy surface warm up a bit.
"This is the first time water vapor has been unequivocally detected on Ceres or any other object in the Asteroid Belt and provides proof that Ceres has an icy surface and an atmosphere," Dr. Michael Kuppers explained in a January 22, 2014 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Press Release. Dr. Kuppers is of the ESA in Spain. The JPL is located in Pasadena, California.
The idea that Ceres, which is located about 270 million kilometers from Earth, might hold water is more than 30 years old. However, the existence of this water has been difficult to confirm. The study released in January 2014 reports observations that Ceres hurls out water molecules from two distinct locations on its surface. The entire vapor emission is about 6 kilograms per second, and it could originate from ice morphing directly to a gas or from icy volcanoes (cryovolcanism), the team writes in the January 23, 2014 issue of the journal Nature.
Herschel's sensors detected water vapor plumes emanating from the surface of Ceres during three of its four observation periods. The strength of absorption changed over a span of hours, and this activity was likely caused by relatively small supplies of water vapor rotating in and out of the view from our planet, according to the team of astronomers.
The confirmation of water on Ceres adds further credibility to the idea that icy objects, such as comets, may have wandered into the Main Asteroid Belt from their frozen, dark, and distant home in the outer regions of our Solar System-- far from the golden warmth and friendly light of our Star--at a time when our Solar System was still young and forming.
Ceres's Habitat
Our Sun formed as one stellar member of an ancient star-cluster, that was embedded within a dark and frigid molecular cloud. When dense blobs within this cloud collapsed under the weight of their own gravity, sparkling little protostars were born, and their freshly flaming nuclear furnaces provided enough radiation pressure to maintain the bounciness of the neonatal sister-stars against the crushing force of their own gravity. The newborn sister-stars, that resided in the same cluster-cradle as our own Sun, ultimately started to wander away on their own as they grew older, and traveled independently to distant regions from their birthplace. When our Solar System formed approximately 4.56 billion years ago, our Sun still had its glittering sisters close by, but the family ultimately dispersed, and now all of the solar-siblings are much further away--and very difficult for astronomers to find.
Today, our Sun is a sparkling golden sphere in our daytime sky. It is actually a relatively small, rather ordinary, middle-aged Star, still on the hydrogen-burning main-sequence. It is a searing-hot, enormous ball of seething, roiling gas. There are eight major planets, a large number of bewitching moons, and a rich variety of other, primarily smaller objects, orbiting our lovely Star. Our Solar System is situated in the distant suburbs of an ordinary, though majestic, star-blasted barred-spiral Galaxy--the Milky Way. Our Galaxy is a glittering starlit pin-wheel twirling in Space. There are eight major planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, circling around our Star, carrying their attendant moons along with them. Most (but not all) of the moons, dwelling in our Solar System, are icy bodies, orbiting the four outer planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. However, some of the moons in our Sun's family are rocky objects, such as Earth's own large Moon.
NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Spots Two Bright Points... by arynews
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8275381
Herschel is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission that has made important contributions to NASA. Plumes of water vapor are believed to be hurled up periodically from Ceres when areas of its icy surface warm up a bit.
"This is the first time water vapor has been unequivocally detected on Ceres or any other object in the Asteroid Belt and provides proof that Ceres has an icy surface and an atmosphere," Dr. Michael Kuppers explained in a January 22, 2014 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Press Release. Dr. Kuppers is of the ESA in Spain. The JPL is located in Pasadena, California.
The idea that Ceres, which is located about 270 million kilometers from Earth, might hold water is more than 30 years old. However, the existence of this water has been difficult to confirm. The study released in January 2014 reports observations that Ceres hurls out water molecules from two distinct locations on its surface. The entire vapor emission is about 6 kilograms per second, and it could originate from ice morphing directly to a gas or from icy volcanoes (cryovolcanism), the team writes in the January 23, 2014 issue of the journal Nature.
Herschel's sensors detected water vapor plumes emanating from the surface of Ceres during three of its four observation periods. The strength of absorption changed over a span of hours, and this activity was likely caused by relatively small supplies of water vapor rotating in and out of the view from our planet, according to the team of astronomers.
The confirmation of water on Ceres adds further credibility to the idea that icy objects, such as comets, may have wandered into the Main Asteroid Belt from their frozen, dark, and distant home in the outer regions of our Solar System-- far from the golden warmth and friendly light of our Star--at a time when our Solar System was still young and forming.
Ceres's Habitat
Our Sun formed as one stellar member of an ancient star-cluster, that was embedded within a dark and frigid molecular cloud. When dense blobs within this cloud collapsed under the weight of their own gravity, sparkling little protostars were born, and their freshly flaming nuclear furnaces provided enough radiation pressure to maintain the bounciness of the neonatal sister-stars against the crushing force of their own gravity. The newborn sister-stars, that resided in the same cluster-cradle as our own Sun, ultimately started to wander away on their own as they grew older, and traveled independently to distant regions from their birthplace. When our Solar System formed approximately 4.56 billion years ago, our Sun still had its glittering sisters close by, but the family ultimately dispersed, and now all of the solar-siblings are much further away--and very difficult for astronomers to find.
Today, our Sun is a sparkling golden sphere in our daytime sky. It is actually a relatively small, rather ordinary, middle-aged Star, still on the hydrogen-burning main-sequence. It is a searing-hot, enormous ball of seething, roiling gas. There are eight major planets, a large number of bewitching moons, and a rich variety of other, primarily smaller objects, orbiting our lovely Star. Our Solar System is situated in the distant suburbs of an ordinary, though majestic, star-blasted barred-spiral Galaxy--the Milky Way. Our Galaxy is a glittering starlit pin-wheel twirling in Space. There are eight major planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, circling around our Star, carrying their attendant moons along with them. Most (but not all) of the moons, dwelling in our Solar System, are icy bodies, orbiting the four outer planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. However, some of the moons in our Sun's family are rocky objects, such as Earth's own large Moon.
NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Spots Two Bright Points... by arynews
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8275381
