LOS ANGELES (AP) – A NASA spacecraft has spied what appears to be an inactive volcano on the surface of Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The volcano is about half as tall as Mount Everest and likely last erupted several hundred million years ago, scientists reported Thursday.
“It’s totally cool and unexpected,” said chief scientist Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Evidence of past volcanic activity has been spotted on many planets and their moons, but whether there ever was similar activity on Ceres remained unclear until the arrival of the Dawn spacecraft.
The dome-shaped mountain appears to be made of salt and mud, unlike volcanoes in the outer solar system, which are icy, said Ottaviano Ruesch of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center who led the team that analyzed the images.