Welcome back for another ASTRO Blog.
Today I was reading up on the little known about Dwarf Planet CERES. So I thought I would share my findings with you as it seems quite interesting.
Ceres was found by an astronomer searching for a star. He thought he found a comet, but with the help of other astronomers decided it was a planet. As more objects were found between Mars and Jupiter, scientists decided Ceres should be called an asteroid—the largest in the region we now call the main asteroid belt. Then, in 2006, Ceres was reclassified as a dwarf planet—the closest one to Earth.
Dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and the only dwarf planet located in the inner solar system. It was the first member of the asteroid belt to be discovered when Giuseppe Piazzi spotted it in 1801. And when Dawn arrived in 2015, Ceres became the first dwarf planet to receive a visit from a spacecraft.
Called an asteroid for many years, Ceres is so much bigger and so different from its rocky neighbors that scientists classified it as a dwarf planet in 2006. Even though Ceres comprises 25 percent of the asteroid belt’s total mass, tiny Pluto is still 14 times more massive.
Ceres is named for the Roman goddess of corn and harvests. The word cereal comes from the same name.
“In the age of acorns, before the times of Ceres, a single barley corn had more value to all mankind, than all the diamonds of the mines of India.”
- Henry Brooke
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