Planet CERES: location and characteristics

To discover the planet Ceres and its characteristics, we must travel to the main asteroid belt, in the inner solar system. It is there that we will find the dwarf planet Ceres! That, although it has been known since the 19th century, it has not been able to be observed and studied in detail until much more recent times; thanks to space missions like the Dawn probe. In this lesson from a TEACHER we show you the location of the planet Ceres, as well as the main elements that identify it.

Ceres it's a dwarf planet of the solar system located in the asteroid main belt between Jupiter and Mars. Is he larger object of the asteroid belt, with 950 km in diameter and represents 25% of the total mass of the asteroid belt.

It is the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system, the region of the solar system closest to the sun that comprises the inner planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars; in addition to the main asteroid belt.

The planet Ceres was first observed in 1801, with a size much smaller than the planets discovered until then, it was the first object observed in the main asteroid belt.

Although for many years it was considered a asteroid, Ceres is much larger than the asteroids that surround it and its characteristics are also very different. Ceres was listed as a dwarf planet in 2006. Even so, the dwarf planet Pluto it has a mass 14 times that of Ceres.

What is the main asteroid belt?

It is an asteroid belt located between Jupiter and Mars. It contains the vast majority of asteroids in the Solar system and the range of sizes of these is highly variable: from 530 kilometers in diameter of the largest of them (Vesta) to the smallest whose diameter measures just 10 meters. The total mass of these asteroids is estimated to be less than the masses of Earth's moon.

Ceres is the larger object of all those that make up the main asteroid belt and its characteristics are very different from those of the other objects that populate this area of ​​the solar system.

The planet Ceres was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in the 19th century, but until much more recent times little was known of its characteristics. Telescopes did not allow us to observe this small planet in detail and in the 21st century science still did not have detailed information about Ceres.

This changed with the NASA space mission which, in 2007, launched the Dawn space probe (Sunrise) in order to orbit around the main objects of the main asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres, to map them and observe their characteristics. This NASA space mission became the first space mission in which two objects were orbited and also the first in which a dwarf planet was observed.

In 2015, after two years of observing the giant asteroid Vesta, the Dawn probe landed on the orbit of Ceres to return to Earth just before running out of fuel in November 2018.

Back on Earth, Dawn provided a wealth of information about the characteristics of Ceres and Vesta. The observation of Ceres revealed important scientific data, such as that Ceres presented geological activity, contained organic matter and salty water.