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adaptiveoptics.org provides news and information for the world-wide adaptive optics community. Contact: webmaster@adaptiveoptics.org. News
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Pasadena, California – October 11, 2006:
A team of astronomers led by Benoit Carry of the
Paris-Meudon Observatory
used the state-of-the-art adaptive optics instrumentation available at the
Keck Observatory,
Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to image the surface of Ceres with a spatial resolution of ~30km.
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The observations were carried out during the September 2002 opposition of Ceres in the near-infrared J, H, and K spectral bands,
a wavelength range particularly well adapted to investigate the composition and properties of planetary surfaces.
The team produced albedo maps covering 80 percent of the asteroid,
which appears to display a wealth of 40 to 160km large geological features
with intensity in reflected light varying by ~12 percent across the surface.
The team suggests that the variations could be due to terrain features,
as well as differences in their surface composition and/or degree of alteration by space weathering effects
(such as aging of surface due to interaction of solar wind, micrometeorites impacts, etc).
Although Ceres is the largest main-belt asteroid and was the first to be discovered (by G.Piazzi in 1801), its physical properties are still not well understood. While it is expected to have retained a large amount of primordial water ice in its interior, many questions |
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about the composition of its surface and sub-surface layers, the properties of its regolith and its degree of differentiation, remain unanswered.
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Additional spatially resolved spectroscopic observations are needed to investigate further the properties of Ceres surface.
Such programs will help in the preparation of the NASA
DAWN mission, which will reach Ceres in 2015 and explore, from orbit,
the properties of this intriguing solar system body.
The team is currently planning complementary observations of Ceres during its next opposition in November 2007,
using a suite of adaptive optics instruments at the
Very Large Telescope
of the
European Southern Observatory in Chile.
The team also derived measurements of the dimension and shape of the dwarf planet Ceres, which can be considered as an oblate spheroid of radii a=481±14 km and b=447±14 km. The direction of its spin axis in J2000 coordinates is R.A.=287° and dec.=69° (5° error). These two results are in agreement with earlier reports made by Thomas et al. (Nature 2005) from the analysis of Hubble Space Telescope observations. Reference: |
An infrared image of Ceres.
Image: LESIA / ESO / SwRI / W.M.Keck Observatory |
 
Art Poster Metal Framed Print Starfire Adaptive Optics Telescope Poster Size: 16 x 20 in
(Unframed)  ,
(Wood Framed)
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P.C. Thomas, J.Wm. Parker, L.A. McFadden, C.T. Russell, S.A. Stern, M.V. Sykes & E.F. Young,
"Differentiation of the asteroid Ceres as revealed by its shape,"
Nature 437, 224–226 (2005)
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Full Press Release
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© 2006 |
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