Our fly-by of Ceres continues to give us things to wonder over, like this topographic map which has revealed something quite strange about the dwarf planet—actually a couple of things.
One of the odd things that has already been noted are the shapes of the craters. Finding craters wasn’t a surprise; the fact that they aren’t round, however, has been. There’s also a cone-shaped mountain which rises a full four miles over the surface that has researchers wondering. They’re currently tossing around potential explanations for the strange terrain, but say they’ll have to wait for an even closer view to settle on any one for sure.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA