Media Platforms Design TeamThanks to the Dawn spacecraft in orbit around Ceres, NASA has mapped enough of the dwarf planet/asteroid to put together this gorgeous fly-over video, all craters and bright ice spots present and accounted for.First discovered in 1801, Ceres was, for a time, considered a planet. Buy by the 1850s, the increasing number of objects detected in what we call the Asteroid Belt led to Ceres being re-designated as an asteroid or minor planet. Today it’s offically a dwarf planet—just like Pluto—and this is the year of the dwarf planet at NASA. Besides Dawn’s visit to Ceres, there’s also New Horizons bearing down on Pluto and its moons.Take a tour around the dirty snowball just now coming into viewCeres is a bit of an enigma, with signs pointing to the possibility of liquid water beneath its surface, which is little more than a thin layer of dust. The world has been at times likened to having the consistency of a ball of slush, and makes for one of the most intriguing places in the inner solar system. It’s also a balmy -36 degrees Fahrenheit there (balmy compared to a lot of other places in the solar system, anyway).Read next: 15 key moments from Dawn’s Epic 8-Year Journey to CeresSo take a tour around the dirty snowball just now coming into view. We’re about to find out a whole lot more about it.View full post on YoutubeSource: NASA via Alex G. OrphanosJohn WenzWriterJohn Wenz is a Popular Mechanics writer and space obsessive based in Philadelphia. He tweets @johnwenz.
