Ceres Archives

Major icy bodies in the Solar System, with the Earth’s moon to scale. The images are shown at the proper relative size. From NASA’s Planetary Photojournal (https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/), Earth’s Moon (PIA00302), Europa (PIA00502), Ganymede (PIA00716), Callisto (PIA03456), Mimas (PIA06258), Enceladus (PIA06254), Tethys (PIA07738), Dione (PIA08256), Rhea (PIA08256), Titan (PIA08256), Hyperion (PIA07740), Iapetus (PIA08384), Phoebe (PIA06064), Miranda (PIA18185), Ariel (PIA01534), Umbriel (PIA00040), Titania (PIA01979), Oberon (PIA00034), Triton (PIA00317), Pluto (PIA19952). -- astro-ph.EP

Ariel, Astrogeology, Callisto, Ceres, Charon, Dione, Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede, Iapetus, Ice Giant, Icy Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Mars, Mimas, Miranda, Missions & Hardware, Moon, Oberon, Phoebe, Pluto, Polar / Alpine Expeditions, Rhea, Status Report, Tethys, Titan, Titania, Triton, Umbriel, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Icy Worlds: Moons And Dwarf Planets

by Keith CowingDecember 1, 2025December 1, 2025

In the outer solar system beyond Jupiter, water ice is a dominant component of planetary bodies, and most solid objects in this region are classified as icy bodies.

Scanning electron microscopy images showing representative regions of desiccated salt samples. Top row: Flash frozen; bottom row: slow frozen. (a) NaCl flash frozen, (d) NaCl slow frozen; (b) Na2SO4 flash frozen, (e) Na2SO4 slow frozen; (c) Na2CO3 flash frozen, (f) Na2CO3 slow frozen. -- JGR Planets

Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Ceres, Enceladus, Europa, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Microstructure Controls Sublimation Timescales of Exposed Salt-Rich Ices on Icy Worlds

by Keith CowingOctober 23, 2025October 22, 2025

Salt-rich water ice at the surfaces of icy worlds, for example, Europa, Enceladus, and Ceres, is of particular interest for Solar System exploration as it can represent a record of […]

This illustration depicts the interior of dwarf planet Ceres, including the transfer of water and gases from the rocky core to a reservoir of salty water as a consequence of internal heating. NASA ID: PIA26570 larger image

Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Ceres, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Missions & Hardware, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Fluid Flow In Ceres Due To Core Heating

by Keith CowingOctober 10, 2025October 10, 2025

A couple examples of molecules carrying chemical energy – carbon dioxide and methane – are included in the illustration.

Ceres’s temperature evolution drives major interior events. - Depending on the extent of internal heating, a mid-sized (~500- to 1000-km radius) icy body such as Ceres may undergo differentiation and then metamorphism of its interior and ocean freezing, leading to the present-day interior structure. After accreting (1), the temperature within Ceres as a function of time and depth controls the events that determine Ceres’s habitability: (2) ice-rock differentiation at ~4 Myr, (3) metamorphic volatiles are added into the ocean ~0.5 to 2 Gyr, and (4) ocean freezing. Here, we assume the ice shell is made of pure water ice. - Science

Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Ceres, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Press Release

Ceres May Have Had Long-Standing Energy to Fuel Habitability

by Keith CowingAugust 20, 2025August 20, 2025

The dwarf planet is cold now, but new research paints a picture of Ceres hosting a deep, long-lived energy source that may have maintained habitable conditions in the past.

(a) Galileo Solid State Imaging (SSI) false color data of Europa’s leading hemisphere and Tara Regio (credit: NASA, JPL/Caltech, PIA01295). (b) Illustration of chaos on Europa (credit: NASA, GSFC, PIA00840), showing hypothesized geologic communication between its subsurface ocean and surface (chaos formation mechanisms summarized in e.g., Daubar et al. 2024). (c) Spectral map showing the distribution of irradiated NaCl on Europa, highlighting its concentration in and around Tara Regio (modified from Trumbo et al. 2019). -- astro-ph.IM

Ariel, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Ceres, Enceladus, Europa, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Assessing Ocean World Habitability With HWO

by Keith CowingJuly 11, 2025July 11, 2025

The instrument payload of the future Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will span a wide range of wavelengths, including the ultraviolet (UV) region that cannot be easily accessed from the ground […]

Surface of Ryugu, taken at night by Hyabusa-2's Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) camera MASCOT/DLR/JAXA

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Ceres, Comets and Asteroids, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Meteorites & Asteroids, Missions & Hardware, Sample Return, Status Report

Challenges and Opportunities in Using Amino Acids to Decode Carbonaceous Chondrite and Asteroid Parent Body Processes

by Keith CowingJune 10, 2025June 10, 2025

Carbonaceous chondrite (CC) meteorites are fragments of planetesimals that hold clues about the early solar system’s organic matter. Amino acids are key to life on Earth; thus their study from […]

Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice and vapor from many locations along the famed "tiger stripes" near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are four prominent, approximately 84-mile- (135-kilometer-) long fractures that cross the moon's south polar terrain. Larger image

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Ceres, Enceladus, Europa, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Supercooling, Glass Formation, and Mineral Assemblages upon Freezing of Salty Ice Grains from Enceladus’s Ocean

by Keith CowingApril 21, 2025April 21, 2025

The analysis of micrometer-sized ice grains emitted into space by Saturn’s moon Enceladus suggests that the moon’s subsurface ocean may be habitable. However, the formation conditions of these ice grains […]

Spectrally red-sloped sites on Ceres identified by the deep neural network. Steep red-sloped spectra (organic-rich) are shown in/as red boxes. Yellow boxes indicate locations of moderately red-sloped pixels, which except for Vinotonus do not display the ∼3.4 micron organic feature. Occator red-sloped material is not marked because of its different nature (see text). A blue rectangle outlines an area overlapping Urvara and Yalode, where carbonate-rich materials are exposed. The exact locations of the identified reddish material are marked by small light-green boxes. The area bounded within the blue rectangle is referred to as the “Urvara-Yalode” region. See Figure 9 and Figure S9 in Supporting Information S1 for more details on these sites. Background image is the equirectangular global mosaic of Ceres created using ∼130 m/pix High Altitude Mapping Orbit color data (R-965 nm; G-749 nm; B-438 nm). -- AGU Advances

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Ceres, Cryobiology, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Press Release

Dwarf Planet Ceres: Building Blocks Of Life Delivered From Space

by Keith CowingJanuary 28, 2025January 28, 2025

Organic molecules are among the necessary inventory of life-friendly worlds. On Earth, the compounds of carbon, hydrogen and – in smaller quantities – other elements form the basic building blocks […]

Map of the AOs on Ceres, using as a proxy the 3.4-μm band depth (scale bar) derived by the Dawn VIR data, superimposed to a context map of the Ernutet region. The inset shows an example of a spectrum of aliphatic-rich pixels compared with an average spectrum of the Ernutet region taken by the VIR spectrometer. -- Science via PubMed

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Ceres, Status Report

Recent Replenishment Of Aliphatic Organics On Ceres From A Large Subsurface Reservoir

by Keith CowingDecember 6, 2024December 6, 2024

Ceres hosts notable aliphatic-organic concentrations, ranging from approximately 5 to >30 weight % in specific surface areas.

This simulation was run in a uniformly 90% ice crust (Fig. 1a) at the equator and shows total vertical displacement after 1 Gyr of relaxation. The black lines are the initial state of the simulation, and the solid colour shows the final state of the simulation. In this case, the crater has only shallowed by ~70 m from an initial depth of 2,400 m (seen as the solid colour at the centre of the crater slightly offset from the black line), for a relaxation percentage of

Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Caves, Craters, Mountains, Subsurface, Lava Tubes, Ceres, Comets and Asteroids, Cryobiology, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Impact events, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

An Ancient And Impure Frozen Ocean On Ceres Implied By Its Ice-rich Crust

by Keith CowingSeptember 30, 2024September 29, 2024

Ceres is a key object in understanding the evolution of small bodies and is the only dwarf planet to have been orbited by a spacecraft, NASA’s Dawn mission.

Ceres

Icy Worlds: Moons And Dwarf Planets

Microstructure Controls Sublimation Timescales of Exposed Salt-Rich Ices on Icy Worlds

Fluid Flow In Ceres Due To Core Heating

Ceres May Have Had Long-Standing Energy to Fuel Habitability

Assessing Ocean World Habitability With HWO

Challenges and Opportunities in Using Amino Acids to Decode Carbonaceous Chondrite and Asteroid Parent Body Processes

Supercooling, Glass Formation, and Mineral Assemblages upon Freezing of Salty Ice Grains from Enceladus’s Ocean

Dwarf Planet Ceres: Building Blocks Of Life Delivered From Space

Recent Replenishment Of Aliphatic Organics On Ceres From A Large Subsurface Reservoir

An Ancient And Impure Frozen Ocean On Ceres Implied By Its Ice-rich Crust

Alien World Chemistry Found Inside A Meteorite that Struck A New Jersey Home

Exoplanet Beta Pictoris d Found After More Than 10 Years Of Searching

When Stabilizing Feedbacks Wreak Havoc In Habitable Planets: Chaos At The Freezing Point In A Four-Feedback Climate Model

Biosignature Detectability On Transiting Habitable Worlds With ELT/ANDES

Rising From The Fragments: A Multi-factorial Regulatory Framework Of DNA Damage Response In Deinococcus radiodurans