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Ceres' shape is controlled mainly by gravity and spin, with only a 3% departure from hydrostatic equilibrium. Its best-fit shape is a triaxial ellipsoid with dimensions a = 483.1 km, b = 481.0, km and c = 445.9 km, with c being the north-south axis and a and b the semimajor and semiminor equatorial axes.
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 .
Two dark features had circular shapes and are presumably craters; one of them was observed to have a bright central region, whereas another was identified as the "Piazzi" feature. More recent visible-light Hubble Space Telescope images of a full rotation taken in 2003 and 2004 showed 11 recognizable surface features, the natures of which are ...
Ceres is saturated with impact craters.Many have a central pit or bright spot. In the first batch of 17 names approved by the IAU, craters north of 20° north latitude had names beginning with A–G (with Asari being the furthest north), those between 20° north and south latitude beginning with H–R, and those further south beginning with S–Z (with Zadeni being the furthest south).
The original can be viewed here: PIA21079 Ceres in Color.jpg: . Modifications made by JCPagc2015. Licensing. Public domain Public domain false false:
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] Like the planets, Ceres is differentiated: it has a crust, a mantle and a ...
In 1975, astronomers Clark R. Chapman, David Morrison, and Ben Zellner developed a simple taxonomic system for asteroids based on color, albedo, and spectral shape.The three categories were labelled "C" for dark carbonaceous objects, "S" for stony (siliceous) objects, and "U" for those that did not fit into either C or S. [2] This basic division of asteroid spectra has since been expanded and ...
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