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Ceres is the largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt. [16] It has been classified as a C‑type or carbonaceous asteroid [16] and, due to the presence of clay minerals, as a G-type asteroid. [60] It has a similar, but not identical, composition to that of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. [61]
First likely dwarf planet visited by a spacecraft, largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft 4 Vesta: 525.4: March 29, 1807: Dawn: 2011–2012: 210: 0.76: Dawn broke orbit on 5 September 2012 and headed to Ceres, where it arrived in March 2015: First "big four" asteroid visited by a spacecraft, largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft at the ...
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 ...
This list includes few examples since there are about 589 asteroids in the asteroid belt with a measured radius between 20 and 49 km. [171] Many thousands of objects of this size range have yet to be discovered in the trans-Neptunian region.
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 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]
Piazzi named it "Ceres Ferdinandea," after the Roman and Sicilian goddess of grain and King Ferdinand IV of Naples and Sicily. The Ferdinandea part was later dropped for political reasons. Ceres turned out to be the first, and largest, of the asteroids existing within the asteroid belt. Ceres is today called a dwarf planet.
Occator / ɒ ˈ k eɪ t ər / 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 ...