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Being the most water-rich body in the inner Solar System after Earth, Ceres is believed to have once hosted a subsurface ocean, [8] the remnant of which may still exist as a global reservoir or as pockets of brines (salty water) at depth. [5] The presence of liquid water has astrobiological significance as any extant water may provide a habitat ...
There are indications that Ceres may have a tenuous atmosphere and water frost on the surface. Surface water ice is unstable at distances less than 5 AU from the Sun, so it is expected to vaporize if it is exposed directly to solar radiation. Water ice can migrate from the deep layers of Ceres to the surface, but escapes in a very short time.
In 2017, Dawn confirmed that Ceres has a transient atmosphere of water vapour. [107] Hints of an atmosphere had appeared in early 2014, when the Herschel Space Observatory detected localised mid-latitude sources of water vapour on Ceres, no more than 60 km (40 mi) in diameter, which each give off approximately 10 26 molecules (3 kg) of water ...
Scientists have detected ice on the planet's surface, which could mean Ceres is hiding an ocean below its frozen crust. Dwarf planet Ceres may have a huge ocean that could support life Skip to ...
The current Venusian atmosphere has only ~200 mg/kg H 2 O(g) in its atmosphere and the pressure and temperature regime makes water unstable on its surface. Nevertheless, assuming that early Venus's H 2 O had a ratio between deuterium (heavy hydrogen, 2H) and hydrogen (1H) similar to Earth's Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water of 1.6×10 −4, [7] the current D/H ratio in the Venusian atmosphere ...
The water in Ceres, however, is not liquid water on the surface. It comes frozen in meteorites and sublimates to vapor. The dwarf planet is out of the habitable zone, is too small to have sustained tectonic activity, and does not orbit a tidally disruptive body like the moons of the gas giants. [45]
New research unveils a surprising twist in the composition of our Solar System’s distant giants.
Neptune, for example, has an atmosphere made of hydrogen and helium (with just a tinge of methane), and it doesn’t really have a surface—or, at least, not what we think of as a surface.