Mysterious Bright Spots and Pyramid-Shaped Mountain on Ceres Revealed in Flyover (VIDEO)

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is continuing to study the tiny world, Ceres. Now, a new flyover has resulted in a video that shows off a pyramid-shaped mountain and bright spots located on Ceres.

Ceres was first discovered on January 1, 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi of Italy. It's only about 606 by 565 miles in size, and has a spheroid shape. It rotates once every 9 hours, and can be found in the main asteroid belt in our solar system.

Like Earth, Ceres has denser material at its core and lighter materials near its surface. In addition, images of bright spots on Ceres has hinted that there may be water ice on the dwarf planet.

The Dawn spacecraft is conducting a nearly decade-long mission. It's already observed the asteroid Vesta and now it's taking a closer look at the dwarf planet Ceres. By studying these bodies, researchers hope to learn a bit more about the early history of our solar system. More specifically, Dawn will study each of these two distinct bodies to see how and why they took different evolutionary paths.

The latest video released by NASA reveals a 3D tour of Ceres. You can see its 2-mile-deep crater and 4-mile-tall mountain in the video. These features reveal a world that is active and has varies terrain. This, in turn, may tell researchers a bit more about this strange, icy world.

To see Ceres for yourself, check out the video below, courtesy of YouTube.

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