A. Nathues

Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research | MPS · Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

Ceres—a potential ocean world—displays multiple signs of recent/current geological activity. There are indications of a high carbon content in its crust, but the exact form of this carbon is elusive. Spectral data acquired by NASA’s Dawn mission revealed local occurrences of aliphatic organics, which are also characterized by spectral redness in th...

In this study we investigated the previously observed young resurfacing absolute model ages at the floor of Occator crater on dwarf planet Ceres on the basis of Dawn data. These young resurfacing absolute model ages have been interpreted to represent the deposition of cryovolcanic material >10 Myr after the formation of Occator crater. In our study...

Kupalo is a ∼4 Ma old, 26-km diameter impact crater on dwarf planet Ceres, which exhibits extensive areas of bright bluish material. Here we describe, for the first time, the geology of Kupalo on a regional and local scale in detail, based on Dawn Framing Camera (FC) imagery. We find the crater has a complex geology consistent with a brittle and he...

The NASA Dawn mission, launched in 2007, aimed to visit two of the most massive protoplanets of the main asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. The aim was to further our understanding of the earliest days of the Solar System, and compare the two bodies to better understand their formation and evolution. This book summarises state-of-the-art results from...

Dawn revealed that Ceres is a compelling target whose exploration pertains to many science themes. Ceres is a large ice- and organic-rich body, potentially representative of the population of objects that brought water and organics to the inner solar system, as well as a brine-rich body whose study can contribute to ocean world science. The Dawn ob...

Ceres is a partially differentiated dwarf planet, as confirmed by NASA’s Dawn mission. The Urvara basin (diameter ~170 km) is its third-largest impact feature, enabling insights into the cerean crust. Urvara’s geology and mineralogy suggest a potential brine layer at the crust-mantle transition. Here we report new findings that help in understandin...

The goal of Project GAUSS (Genesis of Asteroids and evolUtion of the Solar System) is to return samples from the dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres is the most accessible candidate of ocean worlds and the largest reservoir of water in the inner Solar System. It shows active volcanism and hydrothermal activities in recent history. Recent evidence for the exi...

The intimate mixture of ice and silicate within the uppermost few kilometres of Ceres influences its geology and the evolution of its subsurface. Both ground ice and cryovolcanic processes have been hypothesized to form geologic terrains on Ceres, including within Occator crater, where they have been suggested to influence the post-impact surface e...

Hydrothermal processes in impact environments on water-rich bodies such as Mars and Earth are relevant to the origins of life. Dawn mapping of dwarf planet (1) Ceres has identified similar deposits within Occator crater. Here we show using Dawn high-resolution stereo imaging and topography that Ceres’ unique composition has resulted in widespread m...

NASA’s Dawn mission revealed a partially differentiated Ceres that has experienced cryovolcanic activity throughout its history up to the recent past. The Occator impact crater, which formed ~22 Myr ago, displays bright deposits (faculae) across its floor whose origins are still under debate: two competing hypotheses involve eruption of brines from...

Ceres, the only dwarf planet in the inner Solar System, appears to be a relict ocean world. Data collected by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft provided evidence that global aqueous alteration within Ceres resulted in a chemically evolved body that remains volatile-rich¹. Recent emplacement of bright deposits sourced from brines attests to Ceres being a persi...

Landslides are among the most widespread geologic features on Ceres. Using data from Dawn's Framing Camera, landslides were previously classified based upon geomorphologic characteristics into one of three archetypal categories, Type 1(T1), Type 2 (T2), and Type 3 (T3). Due to their geologic context, variation in age, and physical characteristics,...

The goal of Project GAUSS is to return samples from the dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres is the most accessible ocean world candidate and the largest reservoir of water in the inner solar system. It shows active cryovolcanism and hydrothermal activities in recent history that resulted in minerals not found in any other planets to date except for Earth's u...

We present a comprehensive global catalog of the geomorphological features with clear or potential relevance to subsurface ice identified during the Dawn spacecraft’s primary and first extended missions at Ceres. We define eight broad feature classes and describe analyses supporting their genetic links to subsurface ice. These classes include: rela...

We analyze landslides on Ceres using several quantitative approaches to constrain the composition and structure of the top few kilometers of Ceres' crust. We focus on a subset of archetypal landslides classified morphologically as thick, steep‐snouted “type 1” (T1) flows and thin spatulate “type 2” (T2) flows (Schmidt et al., 2017, https://doi.org/...

We report a comprehensive analysis of the global spectrophotometric properties of Ceres using the images collected by the Dawn Framing Camera through seven color filters from April to June 2015 during the RC3 (rotational characterization 3) and Survey mission phases. We derived the Hapke model parameters for all color filters. The single-scattering...

We report a comprehensive analysis of the global spectrophotometric properties of Ceres using Dawn Framing Camera images collected from April to June 2015 during the RC3 and Survey mission phases. The single-scattering albedo of Ceres at 555 nm is 0.14$\pm$0.04, the geometric albedo is 0.096$\pm$0.006, and the Bond albedo is 0.037$\pm$0.002. The as...

We present a high-resolution global shape model of Ceres determined using the stereophotoclinometry technique developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory by processing Dawn's Framing Camera data acquired during Approach to post-Low Altitude Mapping Orbit (LAMO) phases of the mission. A total of about 38,000 images were processed with pixel resolutio...

The distinctive bright regions within Occator crater are one of the most remarkable discoveries of the Dawn mission's exploration of Ceres. The central region is named Cerealia Facula and the additional regions in the eastern crater floor are named Vinalia Faculae. Here we summarize and synthesize the results of this special issue, which aimed to i...

We investigate the region of crater Haulani on Ceres with an emphasis on mineralogy as inferred from data obtained by Dawn's Visible InfraRed mapping spectrometer (VIR), combined with multispectral image products from the Dawn Framing Camera (FC) so as to enable a clear correlation with specific geologic features. Haulani, which is one of the young...

Vinalia and Cerealia Faculae are bright and salt-rich localized areas in Occator crater on Ceres. The predominance of the near-infrared signature of sodium carbonate on these surfaces suggests their original material was a brine. Here we analyze Dawn Framing Camera's images and characterize the surfaces as composed of a central structure, either a...

Upon its approach to orbit the dwarf planet Ceres in early 2015, optical navigation and dedicated satellite search images were acquired with the Dawn mission's framing camera 2. A team of searchers individually processed and examined the images for evidence of objects moving with Ceres. Completeness of search with respect to the space searched was...

Ceres shows an unusual high fraction of crater clusters and crater chains, unprecedented among other asteroidal bodies. It appears that even relatively small craters on the order of 16 km diameter are able to produce a formidable amount of secondary craters stretching out over at least 300 km or 1/10 the Cerean circumference around the crater. Due...

The geologic context of red organic-rich materials (ROR) found across an elongated 200 km region on Ceres is evaluated with spectral information from the multispectral framing camera (FC) and the visible and near-infrared mapping spectrometer (VIR) of Dawn. Discrete areas of ROR materials are found to be associated with small fresh craters less tha...

Variations and spatial distributions of bright and dark material on dwarf planet Ceres play a key role for the understanding of the processes that have led to its present surface composition. We define limits for “bright” and “dark” material in order to distinguish them consistently, based on the reflectance with respect to the average surface usin...

The geology of the outstanding crater Occator on Ceres has been studied by combining highest resolution color images and other information from the DAWN mission. Thus, surface and sub-surface layers and geologic processes can be understood and interpreted in a consistent manner. In order to achieve this, morphometry, absolute surface unit ages, col...

H2O-rich materials are locally exposed at the surface of Ceres as discovered from infrared reflectance spectra of the Visible and InfraRed mapping spectrometer (VIR) of the Dawn mission. Nine locations on Ceres exhibit diagnostic absorption bands of the H2O molecule at 2.00, 1.65 and 1.28 μm. The detections are all consistent with H2O ice mixed wit...

The otherwise homogeneous surface of Ceres is dotted with hundreds of anomalously bright, predominantly carbonate-bearing areas, termed “faculae,” with Bond albedos ranging from ∼0.02 to >0.5. Here, we classify and map faculae globally to characterize their geological setting, assess potential mechanisms for their formation and destruction, and gai...

Dawn is the first spacecraft to visit and orbit Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt and the only dwarf planet in the inner Solar System. The Dawn science team undertook a systematic geologic mapping campaign of Ceres' entire surface. Here we present our contribution to this mapping campaign, a geologic map and geologic history of the Ezi...

CASTAway is a mission concept to explore our Solar System's main asteroid belt. Asteroids and comets provide a window into the formation and evolution of our Solar System and the composition of these objects can be inferred from space-based remote sensing using spectroscopic techniques. Variations in composition across the asteroid populations prov...

The Dawn Framing Camera repeatedly imaged Ceres' North Pole quadrangle (Ac-1 Asari, latitudes >66°N) at a resolution of ∼35m/pixel through a panchromatic filter, enabling the derivation of a digital terrain model (DTM) and an ortho-rectified mosaic. Using this dataset, a photo-geologic map and stratigraphy, complemented with absolute model ages of...

Quadrangle Ac-H-10 'Rongo' (Lat 22°S to 22°N, Lon 288°-360°E) shows a fairly homogeneous topography, with the presence of notable elevations such as Ahuna Mons, Liberalia Mons, and part of Samhain and Uhola Catenae. The deepest areas correspond to the Rongo crater region, the areas between Samhain and Uhola catenae, and the region of the quadrangle...

Dwarf planet Ceres (∅ ~ 940 km) is the largest object in the main asteroid belt. Investigations suggest that Ceres is a thermally evolved, volatile-rich body with potential geological activity, a body that was never completely molten, but one that possibly partially differentiated into a rocky core and an ice-rich mantle, and may contain remnant in...

We conducted a geologic mapping investigation of Dawn spacecraft data to determine the geologic history of the Kerwan impact basin region of dwarf planet Ceres, which is mostly located in the Ac-7 Kerwan Quadrangle. Geological mapping was applied to Dawn Framing Camera images from the Low Altitude Mapping Orbit (LAMO, 35[U+202F]m/pixel) and supplem...

Ac-H-6 'Haulani' is one of five quadrangles that cover the equatorial region of the dwarf planet Ceres. This quadrangle is notable for the broad, spectrally distinct ejecta that originate from the crater Haulani, which gives the name to the quadrangle. These ejecta exhibit one of the most negative ('bluest') visible to near infrared spectral slope...

The Dawn spacecraft arrived at dwarf planet Ceres in spring 2015 and imaged its surface from four successively lower polar orbits at ground sampling dimensions between ∼1.3[U+202F]km/px and ∼35[U+202F]m/px. To understand the geological history of Ceres a mapping campaign was initiated to produce a set of 15 quadrangle-based geological maps using th...

The Dawn Science Team is conducting a geological mapping campaign at Ceres during the nominal mission, including iterative mapping using data obtained during each orbital phase. We are using geological mapping as a method to identify the geologic processes that have modified the surface of dwarf planet Ceres. We here present the geology of the Ac-9...

Since its arrival at Ceres, Dawn's Framing Camera has been imaging the dwarf planet at different altitudes, using 8 different filters. Based on these images, global clear filter mosaics, digital terrain models, and global color mosaics were produced. These datasets are basis for the derived photo-geologic map of the Ac-2 Coniraya quadrangle, locate...

Five decades of observations of Ceres suggest that the dwarf planet has a composition similar to carbonaceous meteorites and may have an ice-rich outer shell protected by a silicate layer. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has detected ubiquitous clays, carbonates and other products of aqueous alteration across the surface of Ceres, but surprisingly it has di...

The Global Geologic Map of Ceres Based on Dawn HAMO Observations

Introduction: Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt, has a low bulk density of 2,162 kgm-3 [1] suggesting large quantities of water (liquid and/or solid) being present within the outer layer and mantle as models predicted [2-4]. Portions of water-ice prevalent in the upper surface sublimates and a fraction of this water can potentiall...

Introduction: Landslides, notably long run-out landslides, are found on a variety of planetary bodies and environments, including icy satellites Iapetus [1] and Callisto [2] and Mars [3,4]. The Dawn mission currently at Ceres has also revealed abundant material flows displaying a wide range of morphologies that break into three types [5]: thick, lo...

This study presents the mapping strategy and geological history of the Rongo quadrangle of Ceres.

Introduction: The Dawn spacecraft to (4) Vesta and (1) Ceres [1] is equipped with two identical Framing Cameras (FC, [2]), returning > 52,000 images of Ceres in seven colors (0.44-0.98 µm) and one clear filter, and performing global surface color mapping at ~140 m/px resolution. For some selected sites, higher resolution color data of ~35 m/px have...

The dwarf planet Ceres (diameter 939 km) is the largest object in the main asteroid belt. Recent investigations suggest that Ceres is a thermally evolved, volatile-rich body with potential geological activity, a body which was never completely molten but possibly differentiated into a rocky core, an ice-rich mantle, and which may contain remnant in...

Dawn at Ceres: What We Have Learned

Characteristics, Formation, and Evolution of Faculae (Bright Spots) on Ceres

The HAMO-Based Global Geologic Map of Ceres

Dawn at Ceres: A Synopsis

Ceres, a dwarf planet located in the main asteroid belt, has a low bulk density 1 , and models predict that a substantial amount of water ice is present in its mantle and outer shell 2–4 . The Herschel telescope and the Dawn spacecraft 5 have observed the release of water vapour from Ceres 6,7 , and exposed water ice has been detected by Dawn on it...