Piazzi’s discovery of Ceres at Palermo
The NASA/JPL Small-Body Database attributes the discovery observation of Ceres at Palermo on 1 January 1801 to Piazzi, G.
What this does and does not establish
Catalogue attribution referencing DISCOVERY.DB, not firsthand testimony or a claim of the first-ever human sighting. Both files agree on date, discoverer and city; no observatory is specified.
- Region
- Europe
- Theme
- Culture and knowledge
- Kind of record
- Placed in a year. A source places this in one year. It is listed under that year; no day precision is invented.
How it is dated
- Date reference
- 1801-01-01
- How we use it
- Year-level placement is limited to the dated source entry.
The date reference is this project’s reading of the source’s date. It may give an era name, a reign or a calendar in a normalised form rather than in the source’s own words; the dating notes say what the source prints.
Dating notes from the research record
Read all numbered rows and neighboring lines in jplastronomy01.txt and jplastronomy01-fields.txt. Line 1 gives 1801-01-01, matching the structured date 1801-Jan-01; its explicit civil AD year is 1801. Original quotation begins at line 1, character 0.
File names and line numbers in these notes, and in the limits above, refer to the project’s retained copies of the cited sources. Names such as calendar_headers are the project’s calendar look-ups, and “the investigator” is the research step that prepared the record.
Sources and quoted text
Line and character numbers under “Location” refer to the project’s retained copy of the source. For database rows, “Edition” names the batch of rows that was fetched together.
Source 1 · Supports the statement
JPL Small-Body Database discovery circumstances
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Solar System Dynamics
Quoted text (English)
1 Ceres (A801 AA) | Discovered 1801-01-01 by Piazzi, G. at PalermoPlain reading of the quoted text, prepared by AI; the quoted wording governs
1 Ceres (A801 AA) | Discovered on 1 January 1801 by Piazzi, G. at Palermo.
Source credit and reuse conditions recorded for this source: Credit NASA/JPL Solar System Dynamics Small-Body Database, discovery circumstances, access date in edition receipt.
Exact source version
293a4e5b0ac3591375ecb520353acf8a4329c57758d7a54a9e54b20fb3e4fabaChecks and changes
Source checked 2026-11-07. An independent AI evidence review supports this bounded, attributed wording. That review does not guarantee historical truth. How records are checked
No correction has been made to this record’s statement or limits.
Revision s1801_astronomy_01_1801_0
Exact revision fingerprint
27469e47bab65226eee16904f55f527895d8abcfd5db2680ad5b7b26f018c501