Mysterious bright spot on Ceres has a partner

An enigmatic bright patch on the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body between Mars and Jupiter, has a dimmer companion in the same basin. The duo, seen in an image from the Dawn spacecraft when it was about 46,000 kilometers from Ceres, could be a sign of active ice volcanoes.

Dawn will arrive at Ceres on March 6 after an eight-year voyage that included a 14-month stop at the asteroid Vesta. Once there, Dawn will spend the rest of the year mapping Ceres in a quest to better understand the history of the solar system.