Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Water ice has been spotted on Ceres, the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt. The ice is trapped in craters at the northern pole — some of the coldest, darkest places in our Solar System. Ceres is now the third planetary body, after the Moon and Mercury, where water ice has been detected in permanently shadowed areas.