At http://phys.org/print373045866.html … Guisseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres way back in January of 1801 – 200 years prior to the Dawn Mission. Piazzi was the director of the Palermo Observatory in Sicily (Italy). He was convinceed he had found a comet – how wrong was he? It was later designated a non-comet as it was seen to have a circular orbit and comets, it was thought, all moved in elliptical orbits. For a while some astronomers even regarded it as a small planet. It was William Herschel who proposed Ceres represented a new idea – saying it was an asteroid. That is how it has remained.
At http://phys.org/print373289488.html and www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4836 … there is an animation of a flight over and around Ceres, a short video you can watch in order to look at the various craters and the single curious mountain that looks like a pyramidal boil bursting out of the surface.