• diverging@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Ceres was considered a planet in the first half of the 1800’s, along with a bunch of things in the asteroid belt. There was a point where there were 64 planets.

    In the present state of knowledge astronomers give us the following list:
    Sixty-four “primary planets” revolving round the Sun as our Earth does.
    Twenty satellites, including our Moon.
    Of the sixty-four primary planets fifty-six are asteroids, comparatively small bodies, all of which were discovered in this century, and fifty-two since the year 1844.]