NASA Herschel Telescope Detects Signs of Water On Dwarf Planet Ceres

Dwarf planet Ceres, the biggest object on the asteroid belt, is spewing water vapor from its icy surface.

In a latest announcement NASA claims that using Herschel space observatory they have found water vapor on the dwarf planet Ceres, a celestial object that is bigger than an asteroid and smaller than a planet.

The telescope showed that as the icy surface of the dwarf planet warmed, plumes of water vapor spewed periodically.

"This is the first time water vapor has been unequivocally detected on Ceres or any other object in the asteroid belt and provides proof that Ceres has an icy surface and an atmosphere," said Michael Küppers of ESA in Spain, lead author of a paper.

The discovery by Herschel, a European Space Agency (ESA) mission that operates with NASA's help, comes right in time for NASA's Dawn mission . Dawn, scheduled to arrive on Ceres in the spring of 2015, aims at taking a close peek at the dwarf planet's surface.

Before heading to Ceres, which was first spotted in 1801, it was orbiting around the large asteroid Vesta for more than a year. On reaching Ceres, Dawn will record the geology and chemistry of the icy surface in high resolution, offering clues to the process that results in water vapor shooting up periodically.

In the last century, Ceres was known as the largest asteroid in the solar system. But it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. It measures 950 kilometers in diameter.

Scientists assume that this dwarf planet is composed of rock with a thick mantle of ice, which if melted would result in huge volumes of fresh water, perhaps more than all of it present on our planet.

The existence of ice on Ceres was long known, but it is Herschel that detected the signature of water vapor.

It detected plumes of water at four different times. Scientists believe that when Ceres swings through the portion of its orbit close to the Sun, part of the icy surface melts due to the Sun's immense heat resulting in water vapor. This vapor is released in plumes at the rate of 13 pounds per second. However, no vapor is emitted from the colder region of the dwarf planet.

Based on the strength of the signal, the researchers spotted the source of water. The clouds of water vapor escaped from two dark regions on the icy surface of the dwarf planet.

The researchers are amazed with the results because celestial objects lying on the asteroid belt don't emit any vapor unlike the comets, which are known to be icier relatives of asteroids. Comets usually spew jets of plumes.

"The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids," said Seungwon Lee of JPL, who helped with the water vapor models along with Paul von Allmen, also of JPL. "We knew before about main belt asteroids that show comet-like activity, but this is the first detection of water vapor in an asteroid-like object."

The finding was documented in the journal Nature.