Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
[f] Six planets, seven dwarf planets, and other bodies have orbiting natural satellites, which are commonly called 'moons'. The Solar System is constantly flooded by the Sun's charged particles, the solar wind, forming the heliosphere. Around 75–90 astronomical units from the Sun, [g] the solar wind is halted, resulting in the heliopause.
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris.
Under the IAU definition, true or "major planets" can be distinguished from other planetary-mass objects (PMOs), such as dwarf planets and sub-brown dwarfs. Nonetheless, certain planet types have been applied to other planetary-mass objects; the Pluto–Charon system has been referred to as "double dwarf planets", for instance.
The number of dwarf planets in the Solar System is unknown. Estimates have run as high as 200 in the Kuiper belt [1] and over 10,000 in the region beyond. [2] However, consideration of the surprisingly low densities of many large trans-Neptunian objects, as well as spectroscopic analysis of their surfaces, suggests that the number of dwarf planets may be much lower, perhaps only nine among ...
The catalog's first object is 1 Ceres, discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801, while its best-known entry is Pluto, listed as 134340 Pluto. The vast majority (97.3%) of minor planets are asteroids from the asteroid belt (the catalog uses a color code to indicate a body's dynamical classification).
The inner Solar System and the terrestrial planets. Mercury. Mercury-crossing minor planets; Venus. Venus-crossing minor planets. 524522 Zoozve, Venus' quasi-satellite; Earth. Moon; Near-Earth asteroids (including 99942 Apophis) Earth trojan (2010 TK 7) Earth-crosser asteroids. Earth's quasi-satellites; 433 Eros; Mars. Deimos; Phobos; Mars ...
Before 2006, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were considered as planets. Below are partial list of these mnemonics: "Men Very Easily Make Jugs Serve Useful Needs, Perhaps" – The structure of this sentence, which is current in the 1950s, suggests that it may have originated before Pluto's discovery.
This is a list of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which are minor planets in the Solar System that orbit the Sun at a greater distance on average than Neptune, that is, their orbit has a semi-major axis greater than 30.1 astronomical units (AU). The Kuiper belt, scattered disk, and Oort cloud are three conventional divisions of this volume of ...