APOD: Unusual Mountain Ahuna Mons on Ceres... (2017 Oct 09)

APOD Robot · Post by **APOD Robot** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:11 am

Unusual Mountain Ahuna Mons on Asteroid Ceres

Explanation: What created this unusual mountain? Ahuna Mons is the largest mountain on the largest known asteroid in our Solar System, Ceres, which orbits our Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Ahuna Mons, though, is like nothing that humanity has ever seen before. For one thing, its slopes are garnished not with old craters but young vertical streaks. One hypothesis holds that Ahuna Mons is an ice volcano that formed shortly after a large impact on the opposite side of the dwarf planet loosened up the terrain through focused seismic waves. The bright steaks may be high in reflective salt, and therefore similar to other recently surfaced material such as visible in Ceres' famous bright spots. The featured double-height digital image was constructed from surface maps taken of Ceres last year by the robotic Dawn mission.

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Bric · Post by **Bric** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 6:54 am

Why exaggerate the vertical elevation? Show it as it really looks. Also, what is the scale?

Boomer12k · Post by **Boomer12k** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 6:58 am

Don't really like the exaggeration... but other views on pages are interesting.
An Interesting feature...but looks like a pimple...

:---[===] *

heehaw · Post by **heehaw** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 9:56 am

...or a blister....

De58te · Post by **De58te** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 10:27 am

Confusion time again.

Why does the APOD robot call Ceres an asteroid, when the Ceres link calls Ceres a dwarf planet, and the only dwarf planet in the Inner Solar System?

Also why is the elevation exaggerated by a factor of 2? Show it as it really is. Now I can begin to understand why a lot of young people call NASA, Never A Straight Answer.

Case · Post by **Case** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 10:34 am

Bric wrote:Why exaggerate the vertical elevation?

As with most exaggerations, to emphasize things. (NASA was reprimanded long ago for not telling when they did this; at least now they tell us it is double height.)

Bric wrote:Show it as it really looks.

Like this? Same image, vertically reduced to compensate for the double height.

: Click to view full size image

Bric wrote:Also, what is the scale?

Wikipedia: Ahuna Mons is estimated to have an average height of about 4 km (2.5 mi; 13,000 ft) and a maximum height of about 5 km (3.1 mi; 16,000 ft) on its steepest side; it is about 20 km (12 mi; 66,000 ft) wide at the base.

A simulated flyover video was also made, which shows Ahuna Mons from 0:01:30–0:02:00.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

heehaw · Post by **heehaw** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 10:37 am

Things should always be shown the way they really are. (For example deep cave photographs should all be pitch black.)

orin stepanek · Post by **orin stepanek** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 11:05 am

Ah; to me it looks like it is made of glass!

neufer · Post by **neufer** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:14 pm

RJN · Post by **RJN** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:52 pm

Note: "bright steaks" has been corrected to "bright streaks" ("r" added) in the NASA APOD. This was to fix a typo and to correct the seeming assertion that food is particularly easy to come by on Ceres. - RJN

Chris Peterson · Post by **Chris Peterson** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 2:06 pm

De58te wrote:Confusion time again.

Why does the APOD robot call Ceres an asteroid, when the Ceres link calls Ceres a dwarf planet, and the only dwarf planet in the Inner Solar System?

Both are perfectly correct terms.

ta152h0 · Post by **ta152h0** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:39 pm

maybe CERES was serenely floating elsewhere when this feature was created

Tekija · Post by **Tekija** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 8:19 pm

Surely, Ahuna Mons must have something in common with the adjoining depression that has almost exactly the same size and shape - a negative image of it, so to say.

neufer · Post by **neufer** » Mon Oct 09, 2017 9:34 pm

: [b][color=#0000FF]Ahuna Mons is roughly antipodal to the largest impact basin on Ceres: Kerwan[/color][/b]

Tekija wrote:
Surely, Ahuna Mons must have something in common with the adjoining depression that has almost exactly the same size and shape - a negative image of it, so to say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahuna_Mons wrote:
<<Ahuna Mons is roughly antipodal to the largest impact basin on Ceres, 280 km diameter Kerwan. Seismic energy from the Kerwan-forming impact may have been focused on the opposite side of Ceres, fracturing the outer layers of the area and facilitating the movement of high viscosity cryovolcanic magma (consisting of muddy water ice softened by its content of salts) that was then extruded onto the surface. Crater counts suggest that formation of the mountain continued into the last several hundred million years, making this a relatively young geological feature.

Kerwan is the largest confirmed crater and geological feature on Ceres. The crater is distinctly shallow for its size, and lacks a central peak. A central peak might have been destroyed by a 15-kilometer-wide crater at the center of Kerwan. The crater is likely to be old relative to the rest of Ceres's surface, as it is overlapped by nearly every other feature in the area. (The crater is named after the Hopi spirit of sprouting maize, Kerwan. The name was approved by the IAU on July 3, 2015.)

Tekija · Post by **Tekija** » Tue Oct 10, 2017 4:15 am

neufer wrote:
[b][color=#0000FF]Ahuna Mons is roughly antipodal to the largest impact basin on Ceres: Kerwan[/color][/b]
Tekija wrote:
Surely, Ahuna Mons must have something in common with the adjoining depression that has almost exactly the same size and shape - a negative image of it, so to say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahuna_Mons wrote:
<<Ahuna Mons is roughly antipodal to the largest impact basin on Ceres, 280 km diameter Kerwan. Seismic energy from the Kerwan-forming impact may have been focused on the opposite side of Ceres, fracturing the outer layers of the area and facilitating the movement of high viscosity cryovolcanic magma (consisting of muddy water ice softened by its content of salts) that was then extruded onto the surface. Crater counts suggest that formation of the mountain continued into the last several hundred million years, making this a relatively young geological feature.

Kerwan is the largest confirmed crater and geological feature on Ceres. The crater is distinctly shallow for its size, and lacks a central peak. A central peak might have been destroyed by a 15-kilometer-wide crater at the center of Kerwan. The crater is likely to be old relative to the rest of Ceres's surface, as it is overlapped by nearly every other feature in the area. (The crater is named after the Hopi spirit of sprouting maize, Kerwan. The name was approved by the IAU on July 3, 2015.)

Neufer, the large impact and AM are geologically of very different age. We can safely conclude that AM was not a direct consequence of that impact. The creater just adjacent to AM appears to be roughly of the same age than AM by lack of sign of later events. When that local impact occurred, it seems reasonable to posit that a similar amount of the salty viscous sludge under the crust was expelled where the antipodally weakened crust had a crack or otherwise was weakest, making AM an indirect consequence of the large impact whereas the small recent impact may have been a direct cause of a tit for tat creater and mound.

neufer · Post by **neufer** » Tue Oct 10, 2017 4:53 am

Tekija wrote:
Neufer, the large impact and AM are geologically of very different age.

And you know this because....

http://www.etymonline.com/word/geology wrote:
<<Latin geologia "the study of the earth," from geo- "earth" + logia (see -logy). In Medieval Latin, geologia (14c.) meant "study of earthly things," i.e. law, as distinguished from arts and sciences, which concern the works of God. Darwin used geologize as a verb.>>

Tekija · Post by **Tekija** » Tue Oct 10, 2017 1:23 pm

neufer wrote:
Tekija wrote:
Neufer, the large impact and AM are geologically of very different age.

And you know this because....

http://www.etymonline.com/word/geology wrote:
<<Latin geologia "the study of the earth," from geo- "earth" + logia (see -logy). In Medieval Latin, geologia (14c.) meant "study of earthly things," i.e. law, as distinguished from arts and sciences, which concern the works of God. Darwin used geologize as a verb.>>

Well, Neufer, as you cited above without a comment a text that used this term in its wider sense, I infered it would be approved parlance from your side, not expecting a volte-face. No offence taken, of course.

Starship Asterisk*

APOD: Unusual Mountain Ahuna Mons on Ceres... (2017 Oct 09)

APOD: Unusual Mountain Ahuna Mons on Ceres... (2017 Oct 09)

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