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Photo Gallery: Asteroids and Comets

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The round shape of Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, suggests that its interior is layered like Earth's. First classified as an asteroid, Ceres was recently also labeled a dwarf planet. It has a diameter of about 590 miles (950 kilometers) and it contains about a third of the asteroid belt's total mass. Photograph courtesy NASA, ESA, J. Parker (Southwest Research Institute), P. Thomas (Cornell University), L. McFadden (University of Maryland, College Park), and M. Mutchler and Z. Levay (STScI)