Introduction
Ceres lies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is the largest such asteroid and is considered a dwarf planet. It has 1.28% the mass of the moon and 27% it's diameter. Ceres was first discovered on January 1, 1801 by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi at the Palermo Observatory. Ceres is considered both an asteroid, like the other objects which share it's orbit and a dwarf planet, like pluto. However, it is intermediate in size between the two, being 3.5 times larger than Vesta, the next largest asteroid, but almost 14 times smaller than Pluto. Ceres is barely visible to the naked eye and it's surface features are barely visible to the most powerful telescopes. Little was known about the dwarf planet until the NASA Dawn spacecraft arrive on March 6, 2015.
