January 1 1 January 1801 A view of Ceres in natural colour, pictured by the Dawn spacecraft. Images were acquired by Dawn at 04:13 UT May 4, 2015, at a distance of 13,641 km. At the time, Dawn was over Ceres' northern hemisphere. The prominent, bright crater at right is Haulani. The smaller bright spot to its left is exposed on the floor of Oxo. Ejecta from these impacts appears to have exposed high albedo material similar to deposits found on the floor of Occator Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/Justin Cowart On January 1, 1801, Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (1746–1826) from the observatory in Palermo, Sicily, discovered the first known asteroid, a dwarf planet (1) Ceres. 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. ...