Ceres’s bright spots have been an enticing mystery ever since NASA’s Dawn spacecraft began approaching the dwarf planet in the spring of 2015. Now, research from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) suggests the brightest of those shiny splotches—located within the enormous Occator crater in the…
On a lonely, cratered plain near the equator of dwarf planet Ceres, a mountain half the height of Everest spirals into an airless abyss. A few hundred million years ago, briny ice lavas from deep beneath the surface pushed Ahuna Mons up, freezing again as they oozed across the mountain’s rugged peak.
Pluto is home to a pair of spiky mountains with holes on the top. That sounds an awful lot like we just found a pair of cryovolcanoes on the distant frozen world!