Discovery of Ceres
2nd Centenary
1 January 1801 - 1 January 2001
About Giuseppe Piazzi
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Father Giuseppe Piazzi, |
On 1st January 1801, in Palermo, the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (1746-1826) discovered Ceres, the first and largest asteroid. The discovery of Ceres followed that of the planet Uranus, made in 1781 by the British astronomer William Herschel (1783-1822). Piazzi's discovery confirmed the so-called "Titius-Bode's law", which assumed the existence of a "fifth planet" between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter. Later the German astronomer Johann Olbers discovered other "small planets", which the astronomical community called "asteroids" or "minor bodies of Solar System". Currently, we know over a thousand of these objects, an important subset of which, called NEA (Near Earth Asteroids), has become particularly important as their orbits cross the orbit of our planet, thus creating the risk of an impact on the earth's surface. |
About Giuseppe Piazzi
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(courtesy of Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo G.S. Vaiana) |
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(courtesy of the Catholic Enciclopaedya) |
Discovery of the Asteroids
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(courtesy of the Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo) |
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| Astronomical Anniversaries
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Ceres
| Ceres |
| Why Ceres? |
| The last compute of Mass of Ceres |
| Ceres Residuals |
Asteroids
