Planetary Society logo
  • “Exploration is in our nature.” - Carl Sagan

Crater ejecta flow on Ceres

Crater ejecta flow on Ceres
Crater ejecta flow on Ceres Dawn took this photo from an altitude of 240 miles (385 kilometers). The scenery here is part of this view from a higher orbit. A section of the wall of the crater at the top of the picture collapsed, allowing material to flow downhill into the larger Ghanan Crater, only a portion of which is shown. The resulting debris stretches for about 25 miles (40 kilometers) and is almost 1,100 feet (about 330 meters) thick in some places. This site is at 78°N, 43°E on this map. Geologists have found that there are a great many places on Ceres where material has flowed over the ground. More than one-fifth of craters wider than about 6 miles (10 kilometers) display evidence of past flow. Researchers have determined that the nature of these Cerean flow patterns is largely a result of the ice in the ground. Flow features are more common at high latitudes, where there is more shallow ice. They show up with a variety of appearances and properties because of differences in the amount of ice at different locations as well as variations in local topography, the specific event that triggered the flow and other factors. Two of the photos below show examples of other types of flows identified on Ceres. Full image and caption. NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA