Mondo Knows Facts
Ceres is the largest object in the main asteroid belt
Accounting for a third of the asteroid belt mass Ceres is a dwarf planet
Discovered in 1801, Ceres has a diameter of roughly 940 kilometres and accounts for approximately one third of the entire mass of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union classified Ceres as a dwarf planet alongside Pluto.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
Go further
More facts like this
Eris discovery prompted the reclassification of PlutoThe distant Kuiper Belt dwarf planet is more massive than PlutoMars has two tiny irregularly shaped moons named Phobos and DeimosThe dark cratered satellites resemble captured carbonaceous asteroidsNeptune moon Triton orbits in the opposite direction of planetary spinTriton is the only large solar system moon with a retrograde orbitSaturn moon Mimas resembles the fictional Death StarThe giant Herschel crater covers one third of the lunar diameterSaturn moon Iapetus features two contrasting colour hemispheresOne half of Iapetus is dark as coal while the other is bright as snowCallisto is the most heavily cratered body in the solar systemAn ancient landscape of ice and rock has remained unchanged for billions of years
Tags: ceres, asteroid belt, dwarf planet
Ceres is the largest object in the main asteroid belt: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Accounting for a third of the asteroid belt mass Ceres is a dwarf planet. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a space fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.
