Asteroids Might Be Camouflaged Based On New Ceres Observation

An interesting new study says that the camouflaging features of some of the Earth's species may also apply to astronomical bodies. While snakes, geckos, owls and other insects mimic their environment to protect themselves, a recent discovery based on NASA's infrared data implies that the exterior layers of asteroids may have also been coated with different materials from various wandering objects in space.

Phys.org reported that new observations through NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) state that asteroids and dwarf planets may not be exactly what most scientists thought they actually look like. The team of astronomers detected varying materials on the surface of Ceres including debris of other asteroids as well as fine dry particles that they believe have resulted from space collisions that occurred tens of millions of years ago.

"By analyzing the spectral properties of Ceres we have detected a layer of fine particles of a dry silicate called pyroxene. Models of Ceres based on data collected by NASA's Dawn as well as ground-based telescopes indicated substantial amounts of water-bearing minerals such as clays and carbonates," said Pierre Vernazza, a research scientist in the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille.

Ceres has been classified as both an asteroid and a dwarf planet. Considered as a member of the composition class "C" along with the other 75 percent of all asteroids based on their colors, scientists have started to question if the largest object within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is indeed similar to others.

Vernazza added, "The detection of some ammoniated clays mixed with the watery clays on Ceres raises the possibility that the dwarf planet might have formed in the outer reaches of the solar system and somehow migrated to its current location."

According to the team, Ceres and asteroids are not the only ones that have outer layers affected by other objects in the Solar System.