Ceres, the dwarf planet that’s nestled in the icy asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter hasn’t gotten much attention. In fact, I wasn’t aware that we had a dwarf planet in the inner Solar System until recently. What’s interesting about Ceres is that we don’t know much about it besides its surface that’s covered in ice and the abundance of water and large oceans. In 2007 the Dawn Spacecraft was launched with a final destination to Ceres. The spacecraft is set to arrive sometime in 2015, transmitting, for the first time ever, images of the alien rock.

In 2003 the Hubble Space Telescope managed to capture something bizarre on the surface of Ceres. A moving bright spot, possibly due to Ceres’ rotation, was seen through the Hubble telescope and to this day remains a mystery. The grainy black and white images taken by the telescope offer no detail as to what the bright spot could be.

Hubble Space Telescope images of Ceres, taken in 2003–04 with a resolution of about 30 km. The nature of the bright spot is uncertain.

“This 100-km-thick mantle (23%–28% of Ceres by mass; 50% by volume contains 200 million cubic kilometers of water, which is more than the amount of fresh water on the Earth.” – Wikipedia

The bright spots could be light reflecting off its icy surface, or some atmospheric anomaly. We won’t know for sure until the year 2015, when Dawn arrives on the shadowy dwarf planet. Exposing the alien surface and possibly what lies underneath its mantle, swimming in its dark and freezing oceans.