Key facts
- Scale fact
- 940 kmmean diameter
- Estimated age
- ~4.56 billion years
- Composition
- Rock and water ice
- Temperature
- ~167 K mean surface
Ceres
940 kmmean diameter
Visual creditDawn 2015 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / MPS / DLR / IDA / Daniel Macháček / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons
Details
Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt and the smallest recognized dwarf planet. NASA’s Dawn mission showed that its brightest spots are salt deposits left by briny water rising from below, showing that Ceres is a water-rich world with a geologically recent past.
Dawn found that Ceres has a differentiated interior and a water-rich crust containing ice, hydrated salts, rock and clathrates. In Occator crater, bright sodium-carbonate deposits record brines that reached the surface or shallow subsurface after the impact.
Some deposits and flow features are geologically recent, and Dawn data leave open the possibility of activity continuing below the surface. Any liquid today is probably limited to brine reservoirs deep below the surface.
Links
- Preset views
- Wikipedia
- Ceres on Wikipedia
- Universe journey
- Sun & inner planets
Size neighbors
Objects near Ceres on the scale
Sources
References for Ceres
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- Ceres — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (Dawn 2015 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / MPS / DLR / IDA / Daniel Macháček, Public domain)
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About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides explain selected parts of that range, while focused views filter the objects by subject.