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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.
It was reported that the name Cthulhu may be submitted to the IAU as an official name. [5] [22] Cthulhu Macula was initially called a regio, but was renamed as the largest of the maculae that span Pluto's equator. [1] [2] On 22 September 2023, the name "Belton Regio" was approved by the IAU for the feature, after astronomer Michael J. Belton. [23]
This position was also very near the galactic equator, making it almost impossible to find such an object within the dense concentration of background stars of the Milky Way. In the fourteen years of looking for planets, until he was drafted in July 1943, Tombaugh looked for motion in 90 million star images (two each of 45 million stars). [24]
Pluto's reign. For decades, students learned the phrase "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" to remember the order of the planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars ...
“Pluto turns out to have as much complexity as Mars or Earth, so much so that I know planetary scientists who call Pluto ‘the other Red Planet.’” Lon Tweeten for TIME
The definition of a planet has been a hot topic ever since a change kicked Pluto out of our planetary lineup in 2006. Now, a group of researchers is proposing a new definition yet again—one with ...
The geography of Pluto refers to the study and mapping of physical features across the dwarf planet Pluto. On 14 July 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft became the first spacecraft to fly by Pluto. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] During its brief flyby, New Horizons made detailed geographical measurements and observations of Pluto and its moons .
Candidate planets around Luyten 726-8 (8.77 ly) [116] and GJ 3378 (25.2 ly) were reported in 2024. [76] The Working Group on Extrasolar Planets of the International Astronomical Union adopted in 2003 a working definition on the upper limit for what constitutes a planet: not being massive enough to sustain thermonuclear fusion of deuterium.