Post by Radrook Admin on Jun 8, 2019 0:26:39 GMT -5
Ceres: Smallest and Closest Dwarf Planet
Ceres, named after the Roman goddess of grain harvest, was previously considered the solar system's largest asteroid, was reclassified as dwarf planet in 2006 -the only dwarf planet inside the orbit of Neptune.It it is the smallest of the dwarf planets with a a diameter of 592 miles. That’s approx. 204 miles less than the distance between Chicago and New York City.
A day on Ceres is only nine hours long since that’s how long it takes to rotate once on its axis. That makes it fifteen hours shorter than a day on Earth. That means that you would experience night and day every nine hours as opposed to Earth’s 24 hour day with its approx. 12 hours of daylight and twelve of night.
In contrast, a year on Ceres would is approx. 4.6 Earth years long, because that’s how long Ceres takes to complete one full orbit around the sun. So a year on Ceres would be the equivalent of 1,679 Earth days. That would make someone twenty-year old on Ceres, ninety-two on Earth.
Then we have mass. Mass produces gravity, and gravity’s perceived pull is what we understand as weight. The problem is that Ceres is fourteen times less massive than Pluto, and only one-hundredth as massive as our moon even though it comprises approx. one-third the mass of the asteroid belt it has only has 3% of Earth's gravity.
So if you weigh 175 pounds on Earth, on Ceres you would weigh 2.25 pounds. Which means that you won’t weigh enough on Ceres to keep your bones healthy.
Communication with Earth would also be very slow. It takes light approx. 27 minutes to reach it, as opposed to Earth’s eight minutes. Which means that communication with Earth would require 27 minutes to send, and twenty-seven minutes to receive a response. A total of 54 minutes or almost an hour for two-way communication.
Another curious thing about Ceres is that it is currently out-gassing water-vapor at the rate of 16.2 pounds in steam every second. If we assume that this rate remains steady over ten years: it adds up in the following way:
972 pound per minute =
58,320 pounds per hour =
1, 399,680 pounds per day =
510, 883,200 pounds per year =
5,108, 832,000 pounds in ten years = loses Five billion, 106 million, eight- hundred and eighty- three thousand-two-hundred pounds per decade in steam.
1, 399,680 pounds per day =
510, 883,200 pounds per year =
5,108, 832,000 pounds in ten years = loses Five billion, 106 million, eight- hundred and eighty- three thousand-two-hundred pounds per decade in steam.
From left to right: Ceres, the Moon and Earth