Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it's the only dwarf planet located in the inner solar system. Ceres was the first asteroid discovered, on 1 January 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo Astronomical Observatory in Sicily. Originally considered a planet, it was reclassified as an asteroid in the 1850s after the discovery of dozens of other objects in similar orbits.

In 2006, it was reclassified again as a dwarf planet – the only one always inside Neptune's orbit – because, at 940 km (580 mi) in diameter, it is the only asteroid large enough for its gravity to make it plastic and to maintain it as a spheroid. Even though Ceres comprises 25% of the asteroid belt's total mass, Pluto is still 14 times more massive. And when NASA's Dawn arrived in 2015, Ceres became the first dwarf planet to receive a visit from a spacecraft.Dawn found Ceres's surface to be a mixture of water ice and hydrated minerals such as carbonates and clay. Gravity data suggest Ceres to be partially differentiated into a muddy (ice-rock) mantle/core and a less-dense but stronger crust that is at most 30% ice by volume.

Ceres's small size means that any internal ocean of liquid water it may once have possessed has likely frozen by now. It is not completely frozen, however: brines still flow through the outer mantle and reach the surface, allowing cryovolcanoes such as Ahuna Mons to form at the rate of about one every 50 million years. This makes Ceres the closest known cryovolcanic body to the Sun, and the brines provide a potential habitat for microbial life. In January 2014, emissions of water vapor were detected around Ceres, creating a tenuous, transient atmosphere known as an exosphere. This was unexpected because asteroids typically do not emit vapor, a hallmark of comets.

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  • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Betrayed by fucking succdems again, the prime minister promised that before the election they would vote on a new gender identity law that would remove having to fucking wait like 2 years into transitioning to apply to a council of cis people to do it, and instead just have it be self-id. But guess what? "Bluuuh pandemic we cant do it we're so busy searching for restrictions to remove and jerking off we just dont have the time or resources.

    Bonus points, if you're nonbinary you literally just cant change your gender marker and gendered personal ID number at all, so you can be transfem and at least want to not be misgendered as a man but you have no options to do so, your personal ID that you use for everything is constantly there like a time bomb. If anyone ever tries to tell you about Sweden being progressive and good for Trans people fucking punch them in the face, its nothing but lib fucking "You cant say tr*nny in polite company anymore and if you wait 3 years for our dogshit underfunded system to give you actual transition care, you're able to transition, so transphobia is defeated!".

    • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Not to mention the fucking state broadcaster has broadcasted no less than three different scaremongering anti-trans programs accusing the trans healthcare system of transing our children(including literally pretending that ROGD is real), transing our autists and just in general being TOO FAST and TOO EXPERIMENTAL.