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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.
Now, the New Horizons scientists have enough material to publish five new papers that detail the probe's findings on the dwarf planet and its moons in Science. One of its most important ...
Nix is a natural satellite of Pluto, with a diameter of 49.8 km (30.9 mi) across its longest dimension. [3] It was discovered along with Pluto's outermost moon Hydra on 15 May 2005 by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope, [1] and was named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night. [10]
A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit around the Sun, massive enough to be gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve orbital dominance like the eight classical planets of the Solar System.
Astronomers believe a planetary body collided with Pluto early in its history to create a gigantic heart-shaped feature on the dwarf planet.
An Earth-mass body orbiting a solar-mass star clears its orbit at distances of up to 400 astronomical units from the star. A Mars-mass body at the orbit of Pluto clears its orbit. This metric, which leaves Pluto as a dwarf planet, applies to both the Solar System and to extrasolar systems. [66]
New Horizons has provided scientists with a new surprise: Pluto has a tail.
Planetary habitability is the measure of a planet's or a natural satellite's potential to develop and sustain an environment hospitable to life. [1] Life may be generated directly on a planet or satellite endogenously. Research suggests that life may also be transferred from one body to another, through a hypothetical process known as ...