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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.
These lists contain the Sun, the planets, dwarf planets, many of the larger small Solar System bodies (which includes the asteroids), all named natural satellites, and a number of smaller objects of historical or scientific interest, such as comets and near-Earth objects.
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.
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 ...
Dwarf planets are bodies orbiting the Sun that are massive and warm enough to have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium, but have not cleared their neighbourhoods of similar objects. Since 2008, there have been five dwarf planets recognized by the IAU, although only Pluto has actually been confirmed to be in hydrostatic equilibrium [ 25 ] (Ceres is ...
Eris (minor-planet designation: 136199 Eris) is the most massive and second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System. [22] It is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) in the scattered disk and has a high-eccentricity orbit. Eris was discovered in January 2005 by a Palomar Observatory–based team led by Mike Brown and verified later that year.
The following is a list of numbered minor planets (essentially the same as asteroids) in ascending numerical order. Minor planets are defined as small bodies in the Solar System, including asteroids, distant objects, and dwarf planets, but not including comets. The catalog consists of hundreds of pages, each containing 1,000 minor planets.
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 ...