Dwarf Planets | Blogs
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Where in the Solar System is Ceres?
My daughter came home from school today and wanted to know where Ceres is located. She and her classmate disagreed, she thought Ceres was in the asteroid belt and he thought it was in the outer reaches of the Solar System near Pluto. My daughter was right; it is in the asteroid belt. Ceres is one of five dwarf planets in the Solar System. It is the closest dwarf planet to Earth. The other four dwarf planets are Pluto (the most famous), Eris, Makemake, and Haumea. These four are technically considered to be plutoids because they orbit the sun beyond Neptune.
Ceres was discovered in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, a monk in Sicily, Italy. He...
