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Ceres (dwarf planet) Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.
Ceres (dwarf planet) facts for kids
Ceres
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| Discovery | |||||||||
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| Discovered by | Giuseppe Piazzi | ||||||||
| Discovery date | January 1, 1801 | ||||||||
| Names | |||||||||
| Name | 1 Ceres | ||||||||
| Other names | A899 OF; 1943 XB | ||||||||
| Category | dwarf planet main belt |
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| Orbit | |||||||||
| Reference date November 26, 2005 (JD 2453700.5) |
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| Longest distance from the Sun | 447,838,164 km 2.987 AU |
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| Shortest distance from the Sun | 381,419,582 km 2.544 AU |
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| Longest distance from the center of its orbital path ("semi-major axis") |
414,703,838 km 2.765 956 424 AU |
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| How long it takes to complete an orbit | 1679.819 days 4.599 years |
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| Average speed | 17.882 km/s | ||||||||
| Mean anomaly | 108.509° | ||||||||
| Angle above the reference plane ("inclination") |
10.586712° | ||||||||
| Size and other qualities | |||||||||
| Average radius | 473 km | ||||||||
| Mass | 9.46 ± 0.04×1020 kg | ||||||||
| Average density | 2.08 g/cm3 | ||||||||
| Surface gravity | 0.27 m/s² 0.028 g |
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| Escape velocity | 0.51 km/s | ||||||||
| How much light it reflects | 0.113 (geometric) | ||||||||
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| Spectral type | G | ||||||||
| Seeming brightness ("apparent magnitude") |
6.7 to 9.32 | ||||||||
| True brightness ("absolute magnitude") |
3.34 | ||||||||
Ceres, also known as 1 Ceres, is the smallest dwarf planet in the Solar System and the only one in the main asteroid belt.
It was discovered on 1 January 1801, by Giuseppe Piazzi, and is named after the Roman goddess Ceres—the goddess of growing plants, the harvest, and of motherly love. After about 200 years from its discovery, the International Astronomical Union decided to upgrade Ceres from an asteroid (or minor planet) to dwarf planetary status in 2006.
With a diameter of about 950 km, Ceres is by far the largest and most massive object in the asteroid belt, and has about a third of the belt's total mass. It was once thought to be smaller than Vesta, which is brighter. Recent observations have discovered that the asteroid is spherical, unlike the irregular shapes of smaller bodies with lower gravity. At its brightest it is still too dim to be seen with the naked eye.
On September 27, 2007, NASA launched the Dawn space probe to explore Ceres and Vesta.
Related pages
Images for kids
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Piazzi's book Della scoperta del nuovo pianeta Cerere Ferdinandea outlining the discovery of Ceres, dedicated the new "planet" to Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies.
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VIR spectrometer mapping(bw; true-color; IR) of Ceres.
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HST images taken over a span of 2 hours and 20 minutes in 2004
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Map of bright spots on Ceres (released 10 December 2015).
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Polarimetric map of Ceres
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Artist's conception of Dawn, travelling from Vesta to Ceres
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