Ice in Ceres' shadowed craters linked to tilt history
Wednesday, March 22, 2017 - 13:42
in Astronomy & Space
Dwarf planet Ceres may be hundreds of millions of miles from Jupiter, and even farther from Saturn, but the tremendous influence of gravity from these gas giants has an appreciable effect on Ceres' orientation. In a new study, researchers from NASA's Dawn mission calculate that the axial tilt of Ceres—the angle at which it spins as it journeys around the sun—varies widely over the course of about 24,500 years. Astronomers consider this to be a surprisingly short period of time for such dramatic deviations.