 As other objects were discovered in the neighborhood of Ceres , it was realized that Ceres represented the first of a new class of objects . In 1802 , with the discovery of 2 Pallas , William Herschel coined the term asteroid ( " star @-@ like " ) for these bodies , writing that " they resemble small stars so much as hardly to be distinguished from them , even by very good telescopes " . As the first such body to be discovered , Ceres was given the designation 1 Ceres under the modern system of minor @-@ planet designations . By the 1860s , the existence of a fundamental difference between asteroids such as Ceres and the major planets was widely accepted , though a precise definition of " planet " was never formulated . 
