Dwarf planet

1 Ceres

1 Ceres is a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter.

The largest thing in the asteroid belt, a quarter the width of the Moon. NASA’s Dawn went into orbit around it in 2015 and is still there, switched off.

Key facts

Catalogue

1 Ceres

Diameter

939 km

One lap of the Sun

5 years

Closest to the Sun

2.55 au

Farthest from the Sun

3.0 au

How the map draws it

Drawn from a published model of 1 Ceres · its surface is the Dawn spacecraft’s black-and-white mosaic, tinted in a grey we chose; the shadows in its craters are the ones Dawn photographed and do not move with the Sun here.