NASA spacecraft finds strange lights on dwarf planet

Michael Kofsky | Special for USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Mysterious dwarf planet with strange bright lights As NASA's Dawn mission is closing in on dwarf planet Ceres, mission scientists are trying to unlock of the strange bright lights eminating from the surface.

PASADENA, Calif. — Millions of miles away, between Mars and Jupiter, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has given NASA scientists their first glimpse of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt.

One big surprise has been a series of very bright spots in the images of Ceres' surface. Despite some Internet conspiracists' claims that the bright lights are from an alien city, Dawn mission scientists say these spots are more likely ice or salts.

The true nature of these bright areas will remain a mystery until Dawn can get closer and study the bright spots in more detail in coming months. In its closest orbit, Dawn's cameras will capture images with 36 times better detail than those it's currently transmitting. We recently sat down for a video interview with Dawn's top scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory here, who spoke about what the bright spots could mean.

They say the dwarf planet could hold clues from billions of years in the past when Ceres was warmer and may have harbored a liquid ocean beneath its surface. One of the goals of the mission will be to determine whether the world was once capable of supporting life.