Image Source Ceres pictured by the Dawn spacecraft in May 2015

Ceres is the largest dwarf planet in the asteroid belt that lies slightly near the orbit of Mars than Jupiter. The diameter of Ceres is about 945 km (587 miles). It is the 33rd largest discovered object in the Solar System and the only dwarf planet before the orbit of Neptune. Ceres is mainly made up of rock and ice and is approximately one-third of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. The apparent magnitude from Earth ranges from 6.7 to 9.3, hence it can only be viewed with naked eyes on extremely dark skies.

Ceres was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi on 1 January 1801 at Palermo Astronomical Observatory. Upon discovery, it was called a planet but was later classified as an asteroid in the 1850s after other objects were discovered in similar orbits.

Ceres has a rocky core and an icy mantle and may have an ocean of liquid water under the icy mantle. The surface is made up of a mixture of water ice and various minerals such as carbonates and clay. In the month of January 2014 sprouts of water vapor were detected from various regions of the dwarf planet, this is unexpected because asteroids in the belt do not emit vapors.

Dawn a robotic NASA spacecraft entered the orbit of Ceres on 6 March 2015 and discovered a cratered surface. Dawn found bright spots in a crater on Ceres. In June 2016, Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of these bright areas confirmed a large amount of sodium carbonate. In February 2017, carbon compounds were detected on Ceres in the Ernutet crater. As of June 2018, Dawn is orbiting Ceres in its final flyby, as close as 35 km and as far away as 4,000 km.

Source: Wikipedia

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