© 2024 Hawaiʻi Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Shedding Light on Ceres’ Darkest Secrets

Wikipedia Commons
Wikipedia Commons

Astronomers with the University of Hawai‘i are a step closer to understanding the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres.

The planet is the largest body in our asteroid belt, and was originally thought to be covered in reflective salt.  Using a gamma ray and neutron detector, scientists found the surface is a porous mixture of rocky materials with ice in the cracks.

The research also supported the existence of ice inside craters that are not visible to the sun’s rays.  UH astronomer Norbert Schörghofer says results confirm predictions that ice can survive for billions of years just beneath the surface.   He adds that the evidence strengthens the case for the presence of near-surface water ice on other main belt asteroids and the moon.

More information can be found at the UH Institute for Astronomy website. 

Nick Yee’s passion for music developed at an early age, as he collected jazz and rock records pulled from dusty locations while growing up in both Southern California and Honolulu. In college he started DJing around Honolulu, playing Jazz and Bossa Nova sets at various lounges and clubs under the name dj mr.nick. He started to incorporate Downtempo, House and Breaks into his sets as his popularity grew, eventually getting DJ residences at different Chinatown locations. To this day, he is a fixture in the Honolulu underground club scene, where his live sets are famous for being able to link musical and cultural boundaries, starting mellow and building the audience into a frenzy while steering free of mainstream clichés.
Related Stories