1st January 1801 Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi of the Palermo Observatory discovers Ceres, the first asteroid to be discovered and the largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt. At 940 kilometres in diameter, it is the only asteroid large enough for its gravity to make it spheroid in shape. The Photograph below was taken by NASA's Dawn Spacecraft in 2015 and is courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA. Ceres follows an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, near the mid