Which is the closest dwarf planet to the Sun?

Ceres is the closest dwarf planet to the Sun and is located in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter.

The International Astronomical Union’s definition of a dwarf planet is that a “dwarf planet” is a celestial body that is in orbit around the Sun. It has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape.

It also has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit and it is not a satellite.The key difference is that a planet has cleared other objects in the area of its orbit while a dwarf planet has not.

Ceres is a distance of 413,700,000 km, (257,061,262 miles) from the Sun and its year is equivalent to 4.6 earth years. It is the smallest of the bodies currently classified as dwarf planets with a diameter of 950km. With the exception of Ceres, the other dwarf planets are found in the outer solar system.

The Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi discovered and named Ceres in early 1801. There are 5 officially recognised dwarf planets in our solar system. The order of the dwarf planets from closest to Sun outwards is Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.

There are another 6 objects in our solar system that are almost certainly dwarf planets and there may as many as ten thousand. Of the dwarf planets, only 2 have been visited by space probes. In 2015 NASA’s Dawn and New Horizons missions reached Ceres and Pluto respectively.