NASA just released new Ceres photos - Ceres gets weirder

Get up close with Ceres 'weird Pyramid' and bright spots in new NASA photos. The closer we get to Ceres, the more perplexing the dwarf planet grows.

The intriguing brightest spots on Ceres lie in a crater named Occator, which is about 60 miles (90 kilometers) across and 2 miles (4 kilometers) deep.

Among the highest features seen on Ceres so far is a mountain about 4 miles (6 kilometers) high, which is roughly the elevation of Mount McKinley in Alaska's Denali National Park.

It's unusual that it's not associated with a crater. Why is it sitting in the middle of nowhere?

Ceres is the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn will resume its observations of Ceres in mid-August from an altitude of 900 miles (less than 1,500 kilometers), or three times closer to Ceres than its previous orbit.

Link original photos:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/images/largesize/PIA19617_hires.jpg

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/images/largesize/PIA19618_hires.jpg

           

NASA finds 3-mile-tall 'pyramid' and more bright spots on Ceres

Ancient astronaut alert! More weird features have been spotted by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on Ceres, a dwarf planet and the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
As Dawn first made its approach on Ceres earlier this year, it caught sight of large, bright and mysterious reflective spots in a crater on the big rock, which is also believed to contain quite a bit of water, ice and/or mud in its interior.
Now orbiting at a near altitude of just 2,700 miles, those big spots remain a mystery (the leading guess is still reflective patches of ice or salts), but Dawn is also beginning to pick out other bright spots and an odd pyramid-shaped peak that NASA estimates to be three miles tall, which would put it higher than any of the Rocky Mountains. The image with the peak was taken on June 6 and released Wednesday.