Stars on Mars Hill: Steve Desch

Steve Desch (ASU) will be speaking on Cryovolcanism: Dwarf Planets, Far Away and Up Close at 6 pm. Not long ago, Ceres and Pluto were not much more than specks of light in telescopes, and other bodies beyond Neptune such as Eris and Haumea were not yet discovered. Now our understanding of these bodies is not just astronomical, but geological: we can infer such planetary processes as differentiation and perhaps cryo- (ice-based) volcanism. With the recent arrival of the Dawn probe at Ceres and the imminent arrival of New Horizons at Pluto, we are getting to know these worlds as the planets they are.