Feature type | Mountain |
---|---|
Location | Ceres |
Coordinates | 6°01′S311°01′E / 6.02°S 311.01°E |
Discoverer | Dawn spacecraft team 2015 |
Eponym | Liberalia, festival for Ceres, Liber, and Libera in Ancient Rome. [1] |
Liberalia Mons is a mountain on the surface of the dwarf-planet Ceres. [2]
Liberalia Mons is located in the north-western hemisphere of Ceres. It is to the north-west of Ahuna Mons, the east of Samhain Catenae, and west of Rongo. [3] Liberalia Mons is the largest mountain on Ceres in terms of base area. It has a diameter of roughly 90 kilometres (56 mi).
Liberalia Mons is named after the ancient Roman festival, Liberalia, celebrated on March 17th which celebrates Liber, Libera, and Ceres, the fertility gods. It was informally named such when it was discovered by the Dawn Spacecraft in March 2015 and its name was adopted by the IAU on 14 December 2015 [4] [5]
Liberalia Mons is associated with having a great amount of Sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) because the area of an around it was upwelled from beneath the surface of Ceres. [6] Additionally, some bright materials have been discovered from the mountain and have been unearthed due to the impact of craters. [7]
Vesta is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, with a mean diameter of 525 kilometres (326 mi). It was discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers on 29 March 1807 and is named after Vesta, the virgin goddess of home and hearth from Roman mythology.
Magnesium sulfate or magnesium sulphate is a chemical compound, a salt with the formula MgSO4, consisting of magnesium cations Mg2+ (20.19% by mass) and sulfate anions SO2−4. It is a white crystalline solid, soluble in water but not in ethanol.
Asphaltite is a naturally occurring soluble solid hydrocarbon, a form of asphalt with a relatively high melting temperature. Its large-scale production occurs in the Uintah Basin of Utah and Colorado, United States. Although the substance has been historically mined in the Uintah Basin, resources are being discovered and mined more recently in other countries such as Colombia and Iran. Gilsonite is mined in underground shafts and resembles shiny black obsidian. Discovered in the 1860s, it was first marketed as a lacquer, electrical insulator, and waterproofing compound approximately 25 years later by Samuel H. Gilson.
A cryovolcano is a type of volcano that erupts gases and volatile material such as liquid water, ammonia, and hydrocarbons. The erupted material is collectively referred to as cryolava; it originates from a reservoir of subsurface cryomagma. Cryovolcanic eruptions can take many forms, such as fissure and curtain eruptions, effusive cryolava flows, and large-scale resurfacing, and can vary greatly in output volumes. Immediately after an eruption, cryolava quickly freezes, constructing geological features and altering the surface.
Albertite is a variety of asphalt found in the Albert Formation in Albert County, New Brunswick, and in a deposit at Dingwall, in the north-east of Scotland. It is a type of solid hydrocarbon.
Ceres is a dwarf planet in the middle main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It was the first known asteroid, discovered on 1 January 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo Astronomical Observatory in Sicily, and announced as a new planet. Ceres was later classified as an asteroid and then a dwarf planet, the only one not beyond Neptune's orbit.
Hydrohalite is a mineral that occurs in saturated halite brines at cold temperatures. It was first described in 1847 in Dürrnberg, Austria. It exists in cold weather.
A planetary surface is where the solid or liquid material of certain types of astronomical objects contacts the atmosphere or outer space. Planetary surfaces are found on solid objects of planetary mass, including terrestrial planets, dwarf planets, natural satellites, planetesimals and many other small Solar System bodies (SSSBs). The study of planetary surfaces is a field of planetary geology known as surface geology, but also a focus on a number of fields including planetary cartography, topography, geomorphology, atmospheric sciences, and astronomy. Land is the term given to non-liquid planetary surfaces. The term landing is used to describe the collision of an object with a planetary surface and is usually at a velocity in which the object can remain intact and remain attached.
Tarpeia is an impact crater on the asteroid 4 Vesta. It is named after the Roman Vestal Virgin Tarpeia, who, according to legend, betrayed the city of Rome to the Sabines. The name Tarpeia was officially approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) on 27 December 2011.
Claudia is a small crater that formerly defined the prime meridian of the asteroid 4 Vesta. The convention of defining Vesta's prime meridian from Claudia is informally referred to as the Claudia coordinate system. The crater was named after the Roman Vestal Virgin Claudia by the Dawn mission team; the name Claudia was officially approved by the IAU on 30 September 2011.
Several bright surface features were discovered on the dwarf planet Ceres by the Dawn spacecraft in 2015.
Ahuna Mons is the largest mountain on the dwarf planet and asteroid Ceres. It protrudes above the cratered terrain, is not an impact feature, and is the only mountain of its kind on Ceres. Bright streaks run top to bottom on its slopes which are thought to be salt, similar to the better known Cererian bright spots, and likely resulted from cryovolcanic activity from Ceres's interior. It is named after the traditional post-harvest festival Ahuna of the Sümi Naga people of India. In July 2018, NASA released a comparison of physical features, including Ahuna Mons, found on Ceres with similar ones present on Earth.
Occator is an impact crater located on Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, that contains "Spot 5", the brightest of the bright spots observed by the Dawn spacecraft. It was known as "Region A" in ground-based images taken by the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea.
Kerwan is the largest confirmed impact basin and one of the largest geological features on the dwarf planet Ceres. It was discovered on February 19, 2015 from Dawn images as it approached Ceres. The crater is distinctly shallow for its size, and lacks a central peak. A central peak might have been destroyed by a 15-kilometer-wide crater at the center of Kerwan. The crater is likely to be young relative to the rest of Ceres's surface, as Kerwan has largely obliterated the cratering in the southern part of Vendimia Planitia.
Yalode is the second-largest confirmed impact basin on the dwarf planet Ceres, after Kerwan. It is located adjacent to another large crater, Urvara, and serves as the namesake for the Yalode Quadrange. Yalode named after the Dahomeyan (Fon) deity of the yam harvest, Yalodé; the name Yalode was officially approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) on 3 July 2015.
The geology of Ceres is the scientific study of the surface, crust, and interior of the dwarf planet Ceres. It seeks to understand and describe Ceres' composition, landforms, evolution, and physical properties and processes. The study draws on fields such as geophysics, remote sensing, geochemistry, geodesy, and cartography.
Achita is a large impact crater on the dwarf planet Ceres. The crater is named after Achita, a Nigerian god of agriculture. The crater was imaged as part of NASA's Dawn mission. The probe showed that Achita has mass-wasting ridges on the floor and is the fourth oldest crater on Ceres having been formed 570 million years ago.
Bethany List Ehlmann is an American geologist and a professor of Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology. A leading researcher in planetary geology, Ehlmann is also the President of The Planetary Society, Director of the Keck Institute for Space Studies, and a Research Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.