See the Colourful Dwarf Planet Ceres and the names of its craters

by NASA | Space Science

Those who were disappointed by the colourless pluto release by NASA after the recent flyby by NASA's New Horizon mission will find this image interesting.

It is an animation showing a color-coded map from NASA's Dawn mission. It reveals the highs and lows of topography on the surface of dwarf planet Ceres, as NASA explained Tuesday.

According to NASA, the Colorful new maps of Ceres, based on data from it's Dawn spacecraft, showcase a diverse topography, with height differences between crater bottoms and mountain peaks as great as 9 miles (15 kilometers).

Scientists continue to analyze the latest data from Dawn as the spacecraft makes its way to its third mapping orbit.

Dawn science team member Paul Schenk, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston said: "The craters we find on Ceres, in terms of their depth and diameter, are very similar to what we see on Dione and Tethys, two icy satellites of Saturn that are about the same size and density as Ceres. The features are pretty consistent with an ice-rich crust."

The statement released on NASA website said some of the craters and other features now have official names, inspired by spirits and deities relating to agriculture from a variety of cultures. The batch of names were recently approved by The International Astronomical Union (IAU) for features on Ceres.

If you feel that NASA never tell us how they derive those strange names for planets outside our own, check out these names below.

Occator:      the name of the Roman agriculture deity of harrowing, a method of leveling soil.

Haulani:       previously labeled "Spot 1," it was named after the Hawaiian plant goddess.

Dantu crater: named after the Ghanaian god associated with the planting of corn.

Ezinu:         after the Sumerian goddess of grain, is about the same size as Dantu.

Kerwan:      named after the Hopi spirit of sprouting maize.

Yalode:       a crater named after the African Dahomey goddess worshipped by women at harvest rites.

"The impact craters Dantu and Ezinu are extremely deep, while the much larger impact basins Kerwan and Yalode exhibit much shallower depth, indicating increasing ice mobility with crater size and age," said Ralf Jaumann, a Dawn science team member at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin.