NASA Sheds Light on the Mysterious Bright Spots on the Dwarf Planet Ceres (VIDEO)

First Posted: Jul 30, 2015 03:33 PM EDT

Scientists are getting some new insights when it comes to the dwarf planet Ceres. Colorful new maps of Ceres based on data from NASA's Dawn spacecraft actually showcase a diverse topography with height differences between crater bottoms and mountain peaks as great as 9 miles.

What's more interesting is that scientists are getting a good look at the craters on Ceres, which are the bright spots that researchers saw before in previous data.

"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," said Paul Schenk, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The features are pretty consistent with an ice-rich crust."

The researchers also named the craters and other features, as well. The newly labeled features include Occator, which is the mysterious crater containing Ceres' brightest spots and which has a diameter of 60 miles. In addition, there's a smaller crater with bright material now named Haulani, after the Hawaiian plant goddess. This crater has a diameter of about 20 miles.

Currently, Dawn is spiraling toward its third science orbit, which is about 900 miles above the surface, or three times closer to Ceres than its previous orbit. The spacecraft will reach this orbit in mid-August and begin taking images and other data again.

The new data will tell scientists quite a bit about the dwarf planet. The researchers also hope to find out a bit more about the mysterious bright spots which pepper the body of Ceres as they look at the data a bit more closely.

Want to learn more about the Dawn mission? Visit NASA's website.

Want to learn more? Check out the video below, courtesy of YouTube.