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The upper diagram shows Ceres's orbit from top down. The bottom diagram is a side view showing Ceres's orbital inclination to the ecliptic. Lighter shades indicate above the ecliptic; darker indicate below. Ceres follows an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, near the middle of the asteroid belt, with an orbital period (year) of 4.6 Earth years. [2]
Dawn is the first mission to visit Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. After orbiting asteroid Vesta for 14 months in 2011 and 2012, Dawn arrived at Ceres in March 2015. The spacecraft is currently in its final and lowest mapping orbit, at about 240 miles (385 kilometers) from the surface.
First asteroid discovered from space; source of Geminids meteor shower. 3753 Cruithne: 5: October 10, 1986: Unusual Earth-associated orbit 4179 Toutatis: 4.5×2.4×1.9: January 4, 1989: Closely approached Earth on September 29, 2004 4769 Castalia: 1.8×0.8: August 9, 1989: First asteroid to be radar-imaged in sufficient detail for 3D modeling ...
The object, classified as a near-Earth asteroid because its orbit would bring it within 30 million miles of Earth, is the most hazardous space rock detected since astronomers first discovered the ...
Since 2008, there have been five dwarf planets recognized by the IAU, although only Pluto has actually been confirmed to be in hydrostatic equilibrium [25] (Ceres is close to equilibrium, though some anomalies remain unexplained). [26] Ceres orbits in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. The others all orbit beyond Neptune.
In 2016, astronomers spotted an asteroid about the size of a ferris wheel in an Earth-like orbit around the Sun. Turns out it's actually a chunk of the moon.
Satellites in geostationary orbit. From the list in the first section, these are the closest known asteroids per year that approach Earth within one lunar distance.More than one asteroid per year may be listed if its geocentric distance [note 1] is within a tenth of the lunar distance, or 0.10 LD.
(76146) 2000 EU 16 is a small asteroid in the main-belt and discovered by LINEAR on 3 March 2000 in Lincoln Lab ETS, and the only known quasi-satellite of the dwarf planet asteroid 1 Ceres. From the perspective of Ceres, its orbit traces an analemma .