On this night in science
The first asteroid is found
January 1, 1801
On this night in 1801, the astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi was mapping stars in Sicily when he spotted a faint point of light that moved a little from one night to the next. It was Ceres, the first object ever found in the belt of rocky worlds between Mars and Jupiter.
Why it mattered
Ceres was called a planet, then an asteroid, and today it's called a dwarf planet. In 2015 a spacecraft named Dawn went to visit it.
Wonder together
If you found a new world, would you call it a planet, an asteroid, or something else?
Where this comes from