What is "ceres"

Ceres \Ce"res\, n. [L., Ceres, also corn, grain, akin to E. create.]

1. (Class. Myth.) The daughter of Saturn and Ops or Rhea, the goddess of corn and tillage.

2. (Actron.) The first discovered asteroid.

Roman goddess of agriculture (identified with Greek Demeter), also the name given to the first-found and largest asteroid (discovered 1801); see cereal. Her festival, Cerealia, was April 10.

n. (plural of cere English)

In ancient Roman religion, Ceres (; ) was a goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and motherly relationships. She was originally the central deity in Rome's so-called plebeian or Aventine Triad, then was paired with her daughter Proserpina in what Romans described as "the Greek rites of Ceres". Her seven-day April festival of Cerealia included the popular Ludi Ceriales (Ceres' games). She was also honoured in the May lustratio of the fields at the Ambarvalia festival, at harvest-time, and during Roman marriages and funeral rites.

Ceres is the only one of Rome's many agricultural deities to be listed among the Dii Consentes, Rome's equivalent to the Twelve Olympians of Greek mythology. The Romans saw her as the counterpart of the Greek goddess Demeter, whose mythology was reinterpreted for Ceres in Roman art and literature.

Ceres is a non-profit sustainability advocacy organization based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1989, Ceres' mission is to "mobilize investor and business leadership to build a thriving, sustainable global economy". Ceres brings together disparate stakeholders - investors, companies and public interest groups - to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy.

In 2007, Ceres was named one of the 100 most influential players in corporate governance by Directorship magazine. Ceres was a recipient of the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2006, as well as a recipient of the Fast Company Social Capitalist Awards in 2008. As of January 2014, its president is Mindy Lubber.

The Ceres Workstation was a computer built by Niklaus Wirth's group around 1985. Ceres was a workstation based on the NS320xx a CPU by National Semiconductor. Ceres was a follow-up project to the Lilith, a machine based on AMD bit-slice technology and the programming language Modula-2. The operating system of Ceres, called "The Oberon System" was completely written in the programming language Oberon. It is an early example of an object oriented operating system utilizing garbage collection on the system level.

On the same hardware Clemens Szyperski implemented as part of his PhD an operating system, called ETHOS, which was taking full advantage of object oriented technologies. According to a posting of Clemens Szyperski on usenet the BlackBox Component Builder, formerly known as Oberon/F, incorporates many of his ideas and principles.

CERES (Capacité de REnseignement Electromagnétique Spatial, Space-based electronic signals intelligence capability) is a French military satellite program consisting of 3 formation-flying spacecraft collecting SIGINT.

Ceres (; minor-planet designation: 1 Ceres) is the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Its diameter is approximately , making it the largest of the minor planets within the orbit of Neptune. The 33rd- largest known body in the Solar System, it is the only one identified orbiting entirely within the orbit of Neptune that is a dwarf planet. Composed of rock and ice, Ceres is estimated to comprise approximately one third of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. Ceres is the only object in the asteroid belt known to be rounded by its own gravity. From Earth, the apparent magnitude of Ceres ranges from 6.7 to 9.3, and hence even at its brightest, it is too dim to be seen with the naked eye, except under extremely dark skies.

Ceres was the first asteroid discovered, by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo on 1 January 1801. It was originally considered a planet, but was reclassified as an asteroid in the 1850s when many other objects in similar orbits were discovered.

Ceres appears to be differentiated into a rocky core and icy mantle, and may have a remnant internal ocean of liquid water under the layer of ice. The surface is probably a mixture of water ice and various hydrated minerals such as carbonates and clay. In January 2014, emissions of water vapor were detected from several regions of Ceres. This was unexpected, because large bodies in the asteroid belt do not typically emit vapor, a hallmark of comets.

The robotic NASA spacecraft Dawn entered orbit around Ceres on 6 March 2015. Pictures with a resolution previously unattained were taken during imaging sessions starting in January 2015 as Dawn approached Ceres, showing a cratered surface. Two distinct bright spots (or high- albedo features) inside a crater (different from the bright spots observed in earlier Hubble images) were seen in a 19 February 2015 image, leading to speculation about a possible cryovolcanic origin or outgassing. On 3 March 2015, a NASA spokesperson said the spots are consistent with highly reflective materials containing ice or salts, but that cryovolcanism is unlikely. On 11 May 2015, NASA released a higher-resolution image showing that, instead of one or two spots, there are actually several. On 9 December 2015, NASA scientists reported that the bright spots on Ceres may be related to a type of salt, particularly a form of brine containing magnesium sulfate hexahydrite (MgSO·6HO); the spots were also found to be associated with ammonia-rich clays. In June 2016, near-infrared spectra of these bright areas were found to be consistent with a large amount of sodium carbonate, , implying that recent geologic activity was probably involved in the creation of the bright spots.

In October 2015, NASA released a true color portrait of Ceres made by Dawn.