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mithridates
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There's still precious little information on Ceres even on Wikipedia, and that means that a lot of the information there is lacking. A lot of people here have been discussing Ceres with quite a bit of interest lately so I'll throw up a few items for discussion that have been on my mind.<br /><br />-Will the Large Binocular Telescope be taking any images of Ceres any time soon? If it's to be as good a telescope as it's supposed to be, I would be most interested in first seeing images of bodies that we have the worst images for at present - Pluto, Eris, Ceres, Vesta, etc.<br /><br />-Surface area is only 1.8 million square kilometres compared to 144 798 465 for Mars, 38 million for the Moon and 510 million for Earth. There seem to be some indications of an atmosphere, but very faint. I read somewhere that Ceres has about half the mass it would need to retain a proper atmosphere, is this correct? Even so, it usually takes thousands of years for a planet to lose an atmosphere and that wouldn't be a problem in the short term for colonization. Would using all the available water there be a good idea, and what kind of climate could be created at that distance? One day is about 10 hours.<br /><br />-Any other thoughts or predictions? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>----- </p><p>http://mithridates.blogspot.com</p> </div>