KNOW YOUR UNIVERSE
CERES
COURTESY: NASA
Dwarf planet Ceres is shown in these false-color renderings, which highlight differences in
surface materials. Images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft were used to create a movie of Ceres
rotating, followed by a flyover view of Occator Crater, home of Ceres' brightest area.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
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.
Size and Distance
With a radius of 296 miles (476 kilometers), Ceres is 1/13 the radius of Earth. If
Earth were the size of a nickel, Ceres would be about as big as a poppy seed.
From an average distance of 257 million miles (413 million kilometers), Ceres is 2.
astronomical units away from the sun. One astronomical unit (abbreviated as AU), is
the distance from the sun to Earth. From this distance, it takes sunlight 22 minutes
to travel from the sun to Ceres.