I was just wondering if anyone would find it useful if there was a dedicated website to the dwarf planet. I've been researching 1 Ceres for quite a while, and I have a lot of PDFs of it, rotation videos, all sorts of information.

A lot of people know very little about this body, which once was a planet, and now is again (of sorts). Ceres has been in the news fairly often, what with it possibly having more fresh water ice than the earth. Some think it might be geologically active. And, only in the last few years have we really gained any sort of look at its surface. What you can see from the Hubble rotational videos, the VLT images, and the Keck II images, is that there is a lot of surface variation. Giant swaths far brighter than the rest, dark spots, light spots... It certainly looks like it has a much more diverse surface than Saturns moon Tethys, which is almost exactly the same size. While Tethys has that gigantic canyon and that enormous crater, it's all pretty much the same color - whereas Ceres exhibits a plethora of albedo variations.

If you go onto Wikipedia, there is some useful media - but no PDFs, PPTs, or anything like that. So... Just to reiterate... Would anyone enjoy a small website devoted to stocking all available information, images, videos, etc, of Ceres? It's gone from Planet, to Asteroid, to Dwarf Planet, so it might be worth paying more attention to

---Vil.

EDIT:
Go here for the completed website:
http://home.comcast.net/~eliws/ceres/

Scroll down to post #6 for more information.

I would like to personally congratulate Ceres for being promoted from
asteroid to Dwarf Planet status! This reverses a mistake made 150
years ago.

-- Kevin Heider

Yes, I believe this is a really big success story. There is simply no way that Ceres should be classified along with the oblong potatoes out there. Ever since we realised it had achieved a nearly round shape we should have upgraded its status to something else.

I also think that being classified as an asteroid hampered humanities exploration of space. Come now, we've sent probes past Uranus, past Neptune, we have sent dozens of spacecraft to Mars, we have sent dedicated spacecraft to Jupiter and Saturn - why have we never sent a probe to Ceres? Because it was "just an asteroid". What could it possibly teach us? Heck, the Dawn mission nearly bit the dust! All of this because it was "just an asteroid". Some boring lump of rock.

I personally think Ceres should be humanities first interplanetary manned mission. Why? Because Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, do not have fresh water in any abundance! You don't go to the closest grocery store if you know they don't have what you want. You go on, even if it is twice the distance, to go to a better store that does have what you want.

A manned voyage to Ceres would be over twice as long as going to Mars, but I think its the best bet for a viable sustainable outpost.

Just my rambling thoughts

---Vil.

@Vilkata

Hum,
Indeed,
a dedicated website sounds good.

Post a link when you've finished (and I'll include it on my links page).

__________________
`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

I agree, there should be a dedicated website. Unfortunately, there is not enough information to provide useful content. Maybe when the probe gets there, we'll have enough firm facts to populate the site.

Personally, I think Ceres will be the first place we discover life outside of earth. Assuming the hypothesis bears out and it is covered with a crust of ice and a mantle of slush and water.

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

Hello Folks, me and my friend (mainly my friend) have created a Ceres dedicated website.

What We Do: Compile documents, information, images, and links, to better inform you.

What We Don't Do: Take those documents, information, images, and links, and turn them into our own work.

If you want to learn more about Ceres history - Read the Wikipedia page we link to.
If you want to learn more about our images - Read the PDFs PPTs or websites they come from.

We hope that this compilation of information can better inform you. We do not plan on rewriting all of the information and making it our college thesis - Although with the information we provide... You can .

http://home.comcast.net/~eliws/ceres/

Something interesting - Download the Visible Light rotation video and increase its size 5 fold just so you can see it clearly (I have bad eye sight myself), I believe you can see both the Crater with Central Peak, and the Dark Spot seen in the Keck II images! It's a bit fuzzy, but I'm quite sure you can see it. It will appear in the upper 3rd of the sphere.

Tell me what you think! My email is at the bottom of the page. Comments, corrections, additions, welcome.

---Vil.

Had a look at this - very well laid out and simple web page - but with lots of information for someone wanting to gain a grounding in understanding Ceres - I would recommend it to anyone dropping by here.

Well done Vilkata!

__________________
BugMeNot A portal to bypass free-site registration.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer - renowned 19th Century German philosopher.

Just checked the site out. Very nice work.

I also looked at the site, and enjoyed it. I've been looking forward to the Dawn mission for some time, and was much relieved when it was resurrected after the budget slashing.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

Well done, but I do have one comment. Charon is in red type on the "New Solar System" chart. As I understand it, the final determination of the IAU excluded Charon from dwarf planet status. I realize that it is not your original work, but you might want to at least put in some text clarifying this point.

Hi Vilkata;

You and your friend did a great job! Thank you.

You might want to add a link to "Selected Asteroids" at http://www.geocities.com/zlipanov/se...asteroids.html
(shows shapes of asteroids that have been visited by spacecraft or observed by radar or HST.)

You should edit your 1st post to add your link to the website now that it is running.

Ok, updated the links - theres some more useful stuff. Again, if anyone has any links or anything at all they think should be included on this site, don't hesitate to email!

I don't plan on providing information on why Charon is labelled a Dwarf Planet in the title image, as it really has little to do with what we try to convey on the site. That and, has the IAU explicitly said that Charon is not a dwarf planet? I think it should be. If two objects were found orbiting eachother, and one was only 5% larger than the other, would the bigger one still be the primary object, with the smaller being its moon? Sounds odd to me. I personally think that Pluto/Charon should be termed a Double Dwarf

We used basic laymans terms on the website to try and let it be accessible to every Average Joe person out there. If they want to learn all the fancy terms and stuff, we provide all the links and data we can to help them with that.

Thanks for all of your support, and I hope I'll get some more feedback replies here!

---Vil.

Edit:

Ok... If I am correct, this is the first feature of Ceres obviously seen in more than one image-set. Many of the surface features on Ceres are enigmatic. How come the giant white spots visible in the Hubble images were not seen in the Keck II images? There are quite a few dark spots, but none seem to be absolutely verified to be the Piazzi feature, they could all be different albedo features. But... This feature is almost certainly the same.



Images from the Hubble rotational video in Visible Light, as well as the Keck II Adaptive Optics images. You can clearly see the prominent crater with raised peak in both images. This should let scientists compare data with both image sets and try to pin point on each image set where the features seen in the other are. It seems like that could provide some valuable information.

What do you think ? I just made that image

---Vil.

Hello again folks.. We've updated the site many times now, you'll have to reload the page most likely to see the updates... Took care of the whole "Charon isn't a dwarf planet!" outrage in regards to the header image. We've added some more images, more links, edited some text, and it's even more complete now.

There has been debate about the roundness of Ceres in another thread, with someone saying it was debatable if Ceres should truly be classified as a Dwarf Planet. I think most data points to it being very spherical, with a differentiated interior leading to it being wider at the equator.

Often smaller bodies get very deformed by impacts, such as Vesta. Proteus also seems to exhibit some fairly enormous impact features. Ceres does not appear to have undergone any severe impacts that would radically alter its shape. There is only one surface feature that can immediately be called a large crater, a large crater with central peak in the northern hemisphere that is seen in several image sets. Just some thoughts!

Enjoy the site!

---

__________________
`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Infrared map of giant asteroid Ceres unveiled

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Very well done . But do you know this infra red image :
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~jhora/mirac/ceres.html

It bother me a little ,because it look like ceres has an atmosphere . What do you think of that ?

I don't see any hard evidence for an atmosphere in that picture.

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

The link on the BBC News site

Where is Ceres orbit, I assume between Mars and Jupiter.

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Fame, glory adventure, a cyber warrior craves not these things.

Yes, within the asteroid belt of which it is the largest member.

__________________
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

This infrared image looks like a rubgy ball , so as Ceres is round how can you explain this image if there is not something to reflect or produce these rays ? And what more natural than an atmosphere if it is not an artifact ?

So explain me why you are bothering me with your "hard evidence" , this is interrogation ,this is speculation just trying to undestand. You cannot undestand that ? Or you cannot stand speculation ?

And Please can you define what is a "hard evidence" ? Do you believe it's better than "soft evidence" ?