What Are the Alien Lights on Dwarf Planet Ceres?

Scientists are baffled by the sighting of a pair of lights shining from a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The lights were captured as NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft made a rendezvous with Ceres, one of the largest celestial objects in the asteroid belt. Initial images showed just a single light on the dwarf planet, but then subsequent pictures revealed there were in fact two lights.

The images were taken on February 19, and from a distance of under 29,000 miles. They show two bright areas on the surface, and so far, scientists have been unable to explain them.

Andreas Nathues, lead investigator at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, released a statement on behalf of NASA: “This is truly unexpected and still a mystery to us. The brightest spot [of the two] continues to be too small to resolve with our camera, but despite its size it is brighter than anything else on Ceres.”

What could the strange lights on Ceres be?

Meanwhile, experts in the space industry have offered their explanations for what the lights could be:

Salt flats

NASA and other experts have put forward the theory that the bright lights are nothing more exciting than large mineral deposits of salt, and light is being reflected off them.

Exposed ice 

Frozen ice is highly reflective and scientists believe that Ceres could have large deposits under the surface. If an asteroid crashed into the dwarf planet, it is possible that some of this ice could now be exposed.  

Reflective metals

Another reflective surface is metal, and NASA scientists agree that the bright nature of Cere’s spots are consistent with a highly reflective material similar to metal. When polished, aluminium is a highly reflective metal and also the most common metallic element found on the Earth.  

Water vapour

In 2014, water plumes were detected originating from Ceres by the European Herschel telescope. The plumes were found in exactly the same area as the two bright lights were spotted. This led to some scientists deducing that the lights were caused from melting ice cores.

Ice volcanoes

On earth we have not heard of ice volcanoes, but scientists are prepared to believe that they could exist on the colder, outer reaches of our solar system. If Ceres has a semi-frozen subterranean ocean, then there could be volcanoes that spew out ice instead of lava. 

Since the first images were taken, NASA’s Dawn has flown approximately 4,500 miles from the surface of Ceres, and managed to capture even more revealing pictures. NASA has even opened a voting pool, asking the public for their opinion on what the reflectivity is on Ceres. They have given options of volcano, geyser, ice, salt, rock, and other, with early indications showing that ‘other’ is a popular choice.

Dawn is set to continue in its orbit around Ceres until June 30. After this date it will proceed in and take a closer look at the dwarf planet from a much lower orbit, and we could finally get some answers.

If you’d like to read about more recent discoveries from NASA, you can read the following articles: NASA to Explore Saturn Moon with Submarine and Warp Drive is approaching…Quickly!