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Ceres makes up 40% of the estimated (2394 ± 5) × 10 18 kg mass of the asteroid belt, and it has 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 times the mass of the next asteroid, Vesta, but it is only 1.3% the mass of the Moon. It is close to being in hydrostatic equilibrium , but some deviations from an equilibrium shape have yet to be explained. [ 64 ]
For example, if a TNO is incorrectly assumed to have a mass of 3.59 × 10 20 kg based on a radius of 350 km with a density of 2 g/cm 3 but is later discovered to have a radius of only 175 km with a density of 0.5 g/cm 3, its true mass would be only 1.12 × 10 19 kg.
At a diameter of 964 km, Ceres is the largest object in the main asteroid belt and comprises about one-third of the belt's total mass. Ceres possesses sufficient gravity to form a rounded, ellipsoid shape, suggesting that it is close to being in hydrostatic equilibrium [6] —one of the conditions for defining a dwarf planet according to the ...
The largest asteroids with an accurately measured mass, because they have been studied by the probe Dawn, are 1 Ceres with a mass of (939.3 ± 0.5) × 10 18 kg, and 4 Vesta at (259.076 ± 0.001) × 10 18 kg. The third-largest asteroid with an accurately measured mass, because it has moons, is 87 Sylvia at (14.76 ± 0.06) × 10 18 kg.
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 ...
The total mass of the asteroid belt is estimated to be 2.39 × 10 21 kg, which is just 3% of the mass of the Moon; the mass of the Kuiper Belt and Scattered Disk is over 100 times as large. [48] The four largest objects, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea, account for maybe 62% of the belt's total mass, with 39% accounted for by Ceres alone.
Dawn is the first mission to study a dwarf planet, arriving at Ceres a few months before the arrival of the New Horizons probe at Pluto in July 2015. Dawn image of Ceres from 13,600 km, May 4, 2015. Ceres comprises a third of the total mass of the asteroid belt.
Image of the main asteroid belt and the Trojan asteroids. The asteroid belt is located between Mars and Jupiter. It is made of thousands of rocky planetesimals from 1,000 kilometres (621 mi) to a few meters across. These are thought to be debris of the formation of the Solar System that could not form a planet due to Jupiter's gravity.