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Ceres (minor-planet designation: 1 Ceres) is a dwarf planet in the middle main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It was the first known asteroid , discovered on 1 January 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo Astronomical Observatory in Sicily , and announced as a new planet .
Dawn is a retired space probe that was launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. [ 1 ] In the fulfillment of that mission—the ninth in NASA's Discovery Program — Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011, and completed a 14-month survey ...
Geology of Ceres. Dawn spacecraft view of Occator Crater on Ceres in enhanced color, this image was taken on 4 May 2015. [1] The geology of Ceres is the scientific study of the surface, crust, and interior of the dwarf planet Ceres. It seeks to understand and describe Ceres' composition, landforms, evolution, and physical properties and processes.
The four largest asteroids constitute half the mass of the asteroid belt. Ceres is the only asteroid that appears to have a plastic shape under its own gravity and hence the only one that is a dwarf planet. [74] It has a much higher absolute magnitude than the other asteroids, of around 3.32, [75] and may possess a surface layer of ice. [76]
Currently most of the objects of mass between 10 9 kg to 10 12 kg (less than 1000 teragrams (Tg)) listed here are near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). The Aten asteroid 1994 WR12 has less mass than the Great Pyramid of Giza, 5.9 × 10 9 kg. For more about very small objects in the Solar System, see meteoroid, micrometeoroid, cosmic dust, and ...
Ceres, at a third the estimated mass of the asteroid belt, is half again as massive as the next fifteen put together. The masses of asteroids are estimated from perturbations they induce on the orbits of other asteroids , except for asteroids that have been visited by spacecraft or have an observable moon, where a direct mass calculation is ...
By far the largest object within the belt is the dwarf planet Ceres. The total mass of the asteroid belt is significantly less than Pluto's, and roughly twice that of Pluto's moon Charon. The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, centered on the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter ...
Occator / ɒˈkeɪtər / is an impact crater located on Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, that contains "Spot 5", the brightest of the bright spots observed by the Dawn spacecraft. It was known as "Region A" in ground-based images taken by the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea.