Dawn: 
To begin to be perceived 
A look at NASA's new venture

The latest probe sent into space by NASA is "Dawn." and this one is designed to take a closer look at the largest of the minor planets. and what are those mysterious bright spots.?

The Major and the Minor

The Earth has eight planets, but when I was a schoolboy people thought we had nine, Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune and Pluto.

Pluto is now classed as a minor planet, so what just is "A minor planet?" A minor planet AKA planetoid "Can be dwarf planets, asteroids, trojans, centaurs, Kuiper belt objects, and other trans-Neptunian objects." We have tracked the orbits of 670,000 minor planets so far, the first one discovered was Ceres in 1801 and for some time, it was thought to be a planet like Pluto

Dwarf planets, asteroids, trojans and centaurs

Just to complicate matters, there are different groups of minor planets and they are named according to where they are positioned, we have e.g "Main-belt asteroids" or just "The Asteroid belt" this belt includes some of the larger ones, Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas, and Hygiea, there are among others Near-Earth asteroids, Aten asteroids, Apollo asteroids, and Distant minor planets

It has taken seven and a half years

Planets of the Solar System to scale. Jupiter and Saturn (top row), Uranus and Neptune (top middle), Earth and Venus (bottom middle), Mars and Mercury.

6 March 2015 Nasa launched a probe called "Dawn." seven and a half years ago, to investigate that largest of the minor planets "Ceres." and it has just gone into an orbit around the dwarf, two weeks ago Dawn discovered two mysterious bright spots.

Extremely surprising and puzzling

Nasa is very excited about them and has called them "Extremely surprising and puzzling." and speculate that might be water or salt deposits. In a months time, Dawn will begin taking close-up images and hope the mystery will be resolved

So you think the planets are big? just look at the size of a star (Our Sun)