Astronomers were shocked and in awe when they saw a 12,000-foot mountain of ice rising from the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres in images sent back by the NASA Dawn probe reports Yahoo.
The mountain ‘is like nothing that humanity has ever seen before’, NASA said this week.
The mountain of ice, since named Ahuna Mons, is even, smooth, and steep-sided, and now scientists believe they know how it formed. The mountain is a huge mud volcano, made of hot mud which burst through the surface at a weak point covered in reflective salt – then froze in the bitter cold of space.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft orbited Ceres for the first time in 2015, capturing data which is now being analyzed by scientists. Ceres is considered a dwarf planet alongside Pluto.
