Planet you've probably never heard of

cnn.com ^ | 8:56 PM ET, Fri February 20, 2015 | Amanda Barnett, CNN

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

(CNN)Way out beyond Mars, but before you get to Jupiter, is a planet.

You read that right. There's a planet between Mars and Jupiter.

You may not have heard of it, but it was discovered in 1801 -- 129 years before Pluto. It originally was called a planet, then later an asteroid and now it's called a dwarf plane

Its name is Ceres (pronounced like series) and you'll likely be hearing a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Huh,

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Kolob! We found you!!!!

[yarddog]

I had not heard of it until fairly recently.

Isn’t it larger than Pluto?

[familyop]

Looks like a nice place. ;-)

[cripplecreek]

Hugh and Ceres.

Some people don’t know these things. Just last week a FReeper asked me what solar system Ceres was in.

[Yo-Yo]

ts name is Ceres (pronounced like series) and you'll likely be hearing a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

This is hugh.

[Dallas59]

Knew about Ceres as far back as 8 years old. Bosses at CNN(communist nut network) must've told this little girl to make something or get out.

[dainbramaged]

Just don’t call it Melancholia.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

LOL! I was thinking the same thing. Maybe it is because I was just reading a mormon thread.

[cripplecreek]

[yarddog]

OK, it is Eris which is larger than Pluto. Actually in that illustration it looks to be the same size.

[Fungi]

Not new. They placed a probe on it already.
http://www.space.com/28310-dwarf-planet-ceres-photos-dawn-spacecraft.html

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Video of some sort at the Trashy website....

[Engraved-on-His-hands]

Known about it since elementary school. Asteroid becomes a planet. More and more teams make the playoffs. The not so famous make the Hall of Fame. C students suddenly become A students. Everybody makes the honor roll. Everybody gets a trophy.

[grumpygresh]

Just the retirement venue most appropriate for 0bama.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I thought the photo was of a golf ball at first.

[cripplecreek]

Ceres contains 1/3 the entire mass of the asteroid belt.

[coloradan]

One of the recently-decided criteria of being a planet is that the object in question is large enough to clear out everything near its own orbit of all other stuff, either ejecting it out in a gravitational slingshot, or capturing it as a moon (or meteorite). Pluto hasn’t done this, which is one of several reasons it fell out of planet-hood, and Ceres hasn’t either, there being rather a large number of other objects in the asteroid belt, i.e. in orbits nearby to Ceres’s orbit, but not captured by it and not ejected either.

[gorush]