Dawn at Ceres

Father Giuseppe Piazzi

  • in 1801, spotted the first object to be discovered in the asteroid belt called Ceres.

  • he originally classified Ceres as a planet.

Ceres

  • largest body found in the region, containing a fourth of the mass of the asteroid belt.

  • is the very first minor planet discovered; the reason why some astronomers call it “1 Ceres”

  • was classified as an asteroid in the 1850s, and was reclassified as a dwarf planet along with Pluto and Eris in 2006

  • is the closest dwarf planet to the Sun

  • is the only dwarf planet found in the inner solar system

  • hypothetically, it has a solid core and its mantle is made up of water ice

  • is the only dwarf planet that does not have any moons

  • its low density indicates it is about 25 percent ice by mass

  • has numerous craters of varying sizes and many of these have a central peak

  • recent discoveries suggest that it is an active planet and that the bright spots are a mixture of magnesium sulfate and possibly water ice

Dawn

  • a NASA’s mission, aims to characterize conditions and processes in Ceres and Vesta, which it reached in 2011

  • was launched in September 2007, and was the first mission to orbit any object in the main asteroid belt

  • on March 2015, it finally entered orbit around Ceres after visiting Vesta, another object in the asteroid belt

Occator

  • a crater on the planet Ceres, known for its bright spots

Dwarf Planet

  • a celestial body that orbits the sun, has enough mass to assume a nearly round shape, and has not cleared its orbit due to lack of gravity

Vesta

  • the second most massive body in the asteroid belt, surpassed only by Ceres, which is classified as a dwarf planet

Asteroid Belt

  • the region of interplanetary space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in which most asteroids are found