These two views of Ceres were acquired by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) as the dwarf planet rotated. The images have been magnified from their original size. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Apparently the Death Star was not destroyed after all.

Cruising through the asteroid belt, NASA Dawn spacecraft is approaching dwarf planet Ceres, and some puzzling features are coming into focus.

“We expected to be surprised by Ceres,” says Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission, based at UCLA. “We did not expect to be this puzzled.”

The camera on Dawn can now see Ceres more clearly than any previous image taken of the dwarf planet, revealing craters and mysterious bright spots.

Mysterious bright spots…I find it odd that this article doesn’t even speculate as to what they might be. Just an optical illusion of some sort? A mineral, radioactive or otherwise? Life, intelligent or otherwise? Aliens preparing to invade? Okay, probably not the latter, because if we got to them before they got to us, we are probably the more advanced species of space monkeys.

Incidentally, on the Death Star issue, the article says this thing has a diameter of 605 miles (974 km). According to the definitive source Wookiepedia, the second Death Star had a diameter of 900 km. So it’s about the right size, given that you don’t know how people come up with these things to begin with. For reference, the Moon has a diameter of about 2,100 miles (3,500 km).