The dwarf planet ceres -- long believed to be a barren area rock -- is an ocean international with reservoirs of sea water under its floor, the results of a prime exploration challenge confirmed monday. ceres is the biggest item inside the asteroid belt among mars and jupiter and has its own gravity, enabling the nasa dawn spacecraft to seize high-resolution photos of its surface. now a group of scientists from america and europe have analysed photos relayed from the orbiter, captured round 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the asteroid. they focused on the 20-million-yr-antique occator crater and determined that there is an "significant reservoir" of brine below its floor. several studies posted monday within the journals nature astronomy, nature geoscience and nature communications additionally shed similarly mild at the dwarf planet, which become determined via italian polymath giuseppe piazzi in 1801. the use of infrared imaging, one crew determined the presence of the compound hydrohalite -- a fabric common in sea ice but which till now had in no way been observed off of earth.