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Ceres Asteroid




 Ceres was once considered the largest asteroid but it has been recently reclassified as a dwarf planet. It is 936 km in diameter and was found on New Year’s Day, 1801. Since then thousands of asteroids have been found. Twelve  of them are more than 200 km in diameter. As telescopes have improved, more and more small asteroids have been detected . There are probably about 100,000 asterods larger than 1 km in diameter. Some experts think there may be as many as  1.2 million.

Vesta, the fourth asteroid to be found  (in 1807), is the only one bright enough to be seen without a telescope.
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