Dawn on Ceres

The individual images which make up this fascinating animated picture were taken in February by NASA's space probe DAWN.  It shows the asteroid Ceres in greater detail than has ever been seen before.  The two glowing 'eyes' in the large crater just above the equator are real and not some camera artifact. The burning question is 'what are they'?

The DAWN spacecraft is using its 'Ion Drive' to spiral  into low orbit around Ceres so more detailed images and analysis will soon be available. Whats for sure is Ceres is significantly different from Vesta the last asteroid visited by DAWN. Vesta is a dry lifeless cratered rock whilst a number of indicators hint at the presence of vast quantities of water below the surface of Ceres.

My guess is the 'bright eyes' are created by sunlight reflected from the shiny surface of water ice but who knows, they could be an enigmatic message left by some alien life form who visited our solar system aeons ago?  Wouldn't it be great if it were the latter rather than the former?

Credits:\NASAJPL-Caltech UCLA MPSDLRIDA
 

 Update 26th April 2015

I was interested to see the recent NASA post of a cylindrical map projection of coloured images taken by the Dawn probe in March 2015 and just prior to entering orbit around Ceres. The coloured images indicate changes in surface rock types and mineralogy.  I have taken and processed similar images of our moon to show variations in mineral morphology. You can see the crater with the two bright spots. I wondered whether the increased light reflective nature of the surface in this area is related to the presence of glassy rock?  Micro glassy spheres were found by astronauts when they visited our moon and I have some Obsidian samples, a naturally ocurring volcanic glass. Obsidian forms when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystalisation.  Of course glass like materials can also be formed when rocks are melted by the impact of meteors e.g the tektites found on earth in the viscinity of impact craters.

Dawn is now in orbit around Ceres and has commenced detailed scientific investigations on April the 23rd, so my above wild speculations may or may not be found to be correct!

This map-projected view of Ceres was created from images taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft during its initial approach to the dwarf planet, prior to being captured into orbit in March 2015.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA