life Article Organic Material on Ceres: Insights from Visible and Infrared Space Observations Andrea Raponi 1,* , Maria Cristina De Sanctis 1, Filippo Giacomo Carrozzo 1 , Mauro Ciarniello 1 , Batiste Rousseau 1 , Marco Ferrari 1 , Eleonora Ammannito 2, Simone De Angelis 1, Vassilissa Vinogradoff 3, Julie C. Castillo-Rogez 4, Federico Tosi 1, Alessandro Frigeri 1 , Michelangelo Formisano 1 , Francesca Zambon 1, Carol A. Raymond 4 and Christopher T. Russell 5 1 Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica–Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, 00133 Rome, Italy;
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[email protected] Abstract: The NASA/Dawn mission has acquired unprecedented measurements of the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres, the composition of which is a mixture of ultra-carbonaceous material, phyllosilicates, carbonates, organics, Fe-oxides, and volatiles as determined by remote sensing instruments including the VIR imaging spectrometer.