Hubble Press Release

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

That's my secret atomic pile.

It is very cool to see these images of Ceres. I'm looking forward to the Dawn mission in a few years which will get a chance to image it closeup.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Just a thought, probably off topic.

Have anyonte tried to do interferometry using Hubble coupled with smoething like one of the Kecks? I would hope it can provide improved pictures of Ceres then.

Wondering...

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The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

That's impossible.

To create an interferometer you must know the distance between the telescopes more accurately than the wavelenght used. In visible light it is nanometers. There is other, worser problems like the fact that you must collect the light of the telescopes in one point with mirrors in extreme accuracy.

Experts may explain it better.

So no optical Earth/space interferometers. On the other hand, true space-borne interferometers are possible.

Radio interferometry is much easier and has been done with satellites.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

If the manage to build the 100 meter optical telescope (OWLT), it should be able to get fairly sharp images of several of the larger asteroids. By the time it is built, we will have good closeups of Ceres and Vesta from the "Dawn" mission, but Pallas, and several other big ones will still be waiting to be imaged.

On the other hand, asteroids, while being pretty cool to people like us, are probably not that interesting to people assigning telescope time. Notice how long Hubble's been up there, and it's only just now that we get these images of Ceres.

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Forming opinions as we speak

It may be fading, but I've been told there used to be a definite caste system in astronomy, with prestige accruing in direct proportion to the distance of the objects being studied. So astronomers studying clusters of galaxies would far "outrank" those who study asteroids.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Hubble has studied many Main Belt asteroids as well as Kuiper Belt objects. It has also discovered several moons around them.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Yeah, I've been wondering if they'd ever get around to doing a Ceres set after they released that series of Vesta images showing its rotation...

Very cool.

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Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Actually this is at least the second time when Hubble has studied Ceres. Last time it was imaged with the WFPC2 camera. Less details were visible, of course.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Ice on asteroids, eh? That would definitely make colonizing the asteroid belt easier.

- Maha "iceteroid" Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

A white splotch on Ceres? It's gotta be milk.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Good. I like milk with my cereal.