When was ceres found

The word cereal comes from the same name. If Earth were the size of a nickel, Ceres would be about as big as a poppy seed.

Ceres is so much bigger and so different from its neighbors that scientists classified it as a dwarf planet in Scientists would like to search for possible signs of life on Ceres. It has something many other planets don't: water.

Ceres is named for the Roman goddess of grain crops and harvests. The largest body in the asteroid belt, Ceres has amassed a number of references in science fiction stories of the 20th and 21st centuries.

In the video game Destiny, Ceres was colonized by an alien race called the Fallen at the end of humanity's Golden Age. Ceres was later destroyed by a civilization of post-humans who inhabit the asteroid belt. Overview Dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it's the only dwarf planet located in the inner solar system.

Ceres takes 1, Earth days, or 4. Ceres completes one rotation around its axis every 9 hours. Dawn reached it in to study its surface, composition and history. Data from the spacecraft suggest that the organic materials most likely were delivered to the surface from the dwarf planet's interior.

Simone Marchi, a senior research scientist at Southwest Research Institute, said in a statement. With this new finding Dawn has shown that Ceres contains key ingredients for life.

Astronomers in the late 18th century mathematically predicted the presence of a planet between Mars and Jupiter, eagerly turning their telescopes to the region in search of the missing body. On Jan. Within a decade, four new objects were discovered in the same region, all also considered planets. Nearly 50 years passed before more, smaller bodies were found scattered between Mars and Jupiter — the components of the asteroid belt — and Ceres was demoted to the status of an asteroid.

In , Ceres was promoted to the status of a dwarf planet ; it did not reach full planetary status because it failed to gravitationally clear its neighborhood of debris, though it often retains its classification as an asteroid, as well.

The largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres makes up nearly a third of its mass. Even so, it remains the smallest known dwarf planet , only miles km across — roughly the size of Texas. A day on Ceres lasts a little over 9 Earth-hours, while it takes 4. The close proximity and low mass of Ceres have led some scientists to suggest that it could serve as a potential site for manned landings and a launching point for manned deep space missions. Unlike most of the asteroid belt, Ceres contains a significant amount of ice.

This could mean similar worlds in the early solar system could have been responsible for bringing water to Earth. Under current solar system models, Earth would have formed primarily rocky. Any water it held on its surface would have been vaporized when a large protoplanet collided with it to form the moon. For a long time, scientists thought that comets might have delivered water to the reformed Earth as they collided with its surface.

However, comet-studying probes have shown that the icy rocks don't contain the right kind of water for their siblings to be responsible for those deliveries. New studies have turned to objects known as main belt asteroids, rock and icy neighbors of Ceres. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more!

And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community space. Nola Taylor Tillman is a contributing writer for Space.

She loves all things space and astronomy-related, and enjoys the opportunity to learn more. In her free time, she homeschools her four children.

Its surface is probably covered with a mixture of water ice, carbonates, and clays. This leads astronomers to believe that it formed differently from the other bodies in the asteroid belt. It is now believed that Ceres formed 4. Apparently, Ceres never accumulated enough matter to get larger than the kilometers in diameter that it currently is.

Ceres contains one-third of the mass found in the asteroid belt. Scientists believe that Ceres has a rocky core and an icy mantle. Some scientists also believe that it has a liquid water layer in its interior. This possibility makes Ceres very intriguing to scientists that are searching for signs of extraterrestrial life. NASA has launched a probe called Dawn , whose mission is to travel to the asteroid belt.

It will first travel to observe the asteroid Vesta. After collecting data from Vesta, Dawn will intercept with Ceres where it will observe its surface features and collect data about its chemical composition.

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