I'm what???
Posted on 01/22/2014 1:51:16 PM PST by BenLurkin
Herschel used its far-infrared vision with the HIFI instrument to see a clear spectral signature of the water vapor. But, interestingly, Herschel did not see water vapor every time it looked. There were variations in the water signal during the dwarf planet’s 9-hour rotation period. The telescope spied water vapor four different times, on one occasion there was no signature. The astronomers deduced that almost all of the water vapor was seen to be coming from just two spots on the surface.
Although Herschel was not able to make a resolved image of Ceres, the team was able to derive the distribution of water sources on the surface.
“We estimate that approximately 6 kg of water vapour is being produced per second, requiring only a tiny fraction of Ceres to be covered by water ice, which links nicely to the two localised surface features we have observed,” says Laurence O’Rourke, Principal Investigator for the Herschel asteroid and comet observation programme called MACH-11, and second author on the paper.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
We need to shut that down right away! Water vapor is a greenhouse gas!
On spaghetti Tuesday on Wednesday?
We’ll get a good look when the Dawn craft arrives there in a few months.
LOL!
I knew it was coming...
Ceres is as complex as any of the other rocky planets. Asimov had it right when he referred to it as ,”the World Ceres’
If we had any spaghetti.
That’s amazing, because Herschel’s been dead for years!
/jk
Thanks BenLurkin. Extra to APoD.
I'm what???
You said ‘water vapor’, there are fourteen places where water vapor is spewing out, three of them are fairly close to you.
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