Lunar and Planetary Science XLVIII (2017) 2033.pdf CERES’ PITTED TERRAINS: MORPHOLOGICAL CONTEXT AND IMPLICATIONS FOR GROUND ICE. H. G. Sizemore1, T. Platz1,2, N. Schorghofer3, D. A. Crown1, T. H. Prettyman1, M. C. De Sanctis4, D. L. Buczkowski5, K. H. G. Hughson6, S. Marchi7, S. C. Mest1, D. A. Williams8, P. M. Schenk9, M. T. Bland10, B. E. Schmidt11, H. T. Chilton11, C. T. Russell6, C. A. Raymond12, and the Dawn Science Team. 1Planetary Science Institute, Tucson AZ, USA (
[email protected]), 2MPI for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany, 3University of Hawai’i, Honalulu, HI, USA, 4Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, INAF, Rome, Italy, 5JHU-APL, Laurel, MD, USA, 6University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 7Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, USA, 8Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, 9Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, TX, USA, 10USGS Astrogeology, Flagstaff AZ, USA, 11Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, 12Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA. Introduction: Prior to the arrival of the Dawn tween features produced by volatile loss (sublimation, spacecraft at Ceres it was anticipated that the dwarf outgassing) and features produced by small impacts planet’s outer shell might be water ice rich [e.g., 1]. was an ongoing consideration in our analysis of FC Using Dawn Framing Camera (FC) images, we have data. Our criteria for identification of pits, depressions, carried out global searches for morphological features and pit clusters relevant to volatiles were the presence that are potentially diagnostic of the presence of sub- of (1) rimless depressions, or depressions with subtle surface ice based on analogies with a variety of solar rims that do not rise above the surrounding terrain [5], system objects [e.g., 2, 3].