Bright spots found on the dwarf planet Ceres began to increase and decrease their brightness. Interestingly, these observations were made not by NASA's Rassvet spacecraft, which is orbiting Ceres, but by a telescope on Earth.
Scientists using a high-precision spectrograph designed to measure line-of-sight velocities and search for exoplanets and installed on a 3.6-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, have discovered "unexpected" changes in Ceres brightness during observations in July and August 2015.
The changes took place in accordance with the 9-hour rotation period of Ceres. Naturally, the Doppler effect in the spectral wavelength created by the movement of bright spots as they recede and approach the Earth was expected, but other fluctuations in brightness were also detected.
“We were very surprised,” said Antonino Lanza of INAF, Catania's Astrophysical Observatory. "We did find the expected spectrum changes from Ceres's rotation, but with significant changes every night."
“Astronomers decided to observe the bright spots of Ceres from Earth and found that they blink every 9 hours, - said the famous ufologist Scott K. Waring. “It looks like a beacon signal, but not across the ocean, but through the solar system. Is it a pre-warning signal, a greeting, a radar signal, or something else? We will never know this in our entire lives, but I'm sure he has a definite purpose. Maybe we should answer?"