Or, as Phil Plait said it on his blog Bad Astronomy: What the heck are those spots on Ceres?

 

 

It appears that NASA also has no clue, as they put up a poll (yes, really) where you can vote what you think this is.

 

Can I say what everybody is thinking, but everybody is afraid to say? Wouldn't it be cool if these are artificial, i.e. made by some life form? I know it is very unrealistic, but all other explanations have their problems too. The funny thing is that at this stage, it cannot be ruled out (yet).

 

Hopefully we'll get better pictures as the Dawn spacecraft goes into lower and lower orbits in the next weeks/months.

it could be pools of mercury, just saying

 

 

 

It would be highly ironic, in one report NASA reported the spots continued to glow after they rotated into shadow.

Edited June 14, 201510 yr by Moontanman

Extraterrestrial deposits; meteor or comet fragments. If you look closely, patches look composed of round shapes, with some overlapping, consistent with head-on impact. If it's icy, shiny stuff that would be quite reflective.

 

Edited June 14, 201510 yr by StringJunky