00:00 On this day in space.
00:03 On New Year's Day in 1801, a Sicilian astronomer named Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the dwarf
00:09 planet Ceres orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter.
00:12 At the time, Ceres was considered to be a planet.
00:15 But after astronomers found more things orbiting in the same region over the next few decades,
00:19 they demoted Ceres and all those other objects to asteroid status.
00:22 However, in 2006, the big debate about Pluto's planetary status led astronomers to redefine
00:28 what it means to be a planet, and Ceres was reclassified again as a dwarf planet along
00:32 with Pluto.
00:33 While it is the smallest of the known dwarf planets, it is the largest object in the asteroid
00:37 belt.
00:38 And that's what happened on this day in space.
