Dawn Mission Nears Ceres Orbit Maneuvers - 2

Fig. 1 NASA: Strange 4 mi. high mountain

The strange pyramid or cone mountain on Ceres raises some questions (Fig. 1).

The top view shows bright spots from what appear to be impacts from meteorites, indicating that this thing might be made out of the shiny material that causes the bright spots in the crater. named "Occator."

The larger question to me is why is there no sign of impact from the crater so near to this mountain, when that impact crater's edge is only tens or hundreds of meters from the edge of the pyramid / cone shaped mountain.

Yet there is no discernible damage to the mountain or to the impact crater's edge (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Impact Crater & Mountain

An impact that close would more likely than not do serious damage to ice, powdered sand, clay, or similar material.

Perhaps it is made from a tough metal or white granite rock.

Or perhaps the meteorite melted underground material which then was squished upward to solidify in the odd pyramid / cone shape.

It is quite the mysterious place.

While looking at the large photo taken by the Dawn Spacecraft here, I noticed that many of the very small craters look like the vents on Vesta (see Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 11 and Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 46).

They are too much of perfect cones to have been impact craters like those around them.

A more likely scenario is that the impact object buried under the surface to encounter ice, which is converted to steam by the intense heat of the impact, then vents to the surface.

Something non-intuitive happened or the pyramid / cone is the tailings of an alien mine?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.