Water in the shadows, from a new source

This paper is making the rounds today and describes new observations of the Ceres asteroid/dwarf planet (take your pick) located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The Dawn Mission has been orbiting Ceres (the second of two asteroids the mission is visiting) for the last year, staring down at the surface. What it’s found is water literally in the place where the Sun don’t shine.

The paper comes courtesy of Nature Astronomy, which is a newly formed journal from the Nature publishing group. And, in a nice turn of events, it comes along with this video that gives you a nice background in why the result is exciting and what the impact is. This is one of the better press release videos that I’ve seen in the last few years and I hope it’s an indication of a higher level of production quality than we’ve had to go on before.

Unfortunately, the video is a little difficult to embed here, so you’ll have to click through to their site above to check it out. Go watch.