To help explain, I made this handy (simplified) drawing: Dawn launched from ... This month, Dawn finally caught up with Ceres, which lies in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.

By far, Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, which girdles the ... within the plumes of water erupting from Enceladus, drawing some connection between the two bodies.

drawing more material in. As it happened, Ceres was well on its way to becoming a planet before it ran out of material to feed on. Bigger than an asteroid, but smaller than a planet, scientists ...

In short, the largest asteroid in the solar system is Ceres, which at nearly 590 miles ... So how do experts draw the line between an asteroid and a meteoroid? To Marchi, if a rocky object ...

A crater-rich dwarf planet named Ceres located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter was long thought to be composed of a materials mixture not dominated by water ice.

Vesta is the second-largest body in the asteroid belt and is surpassed in size only by the dwarf planet Ceres. To look for asteroids, astronomers would draw sky charts every night and look for ...

But first a bit of history: Ceres was the first asteroid to be discovered, by Giuseppe Piazzi on the first night of the 19th century, Jan. 1, 1801. Ironically it was initially classified as a ...

Rocket scientists who have plotted a course for a human mission to the largest known asteroid, Ceres, say that such a voyage may not be much more challenging than sending people to Mars ...

Asteroids are the ancient remnants of our solar system's birth, rocky fragments that never formed into planets. Most of these ...

For years astronomers have tried to look closely at Ceres, the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, a nearly opaque target so featureless that scientists could not even be sure of its shape.