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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.
Pluto was also identified with the obscure Roman Orcus, like Hades the name of both a god of the underworld and the underworld as a place. Pluto (Pluton in French and German, Plutone in Italian) becomes the most common name for the classical ruler of the underworld in subsequent Western literature and other art forms.
Pluto likely acquired large moon Charon in a “kiss and capture” collision billions of years ago. It may have created a subsurface ocean on the icy dwarf planet.
Pluto was considered a planet up until 2006, when researchers at the International Astronomical Union voted to "demote" it to dwarf planet.
Charon, the largest of Pluto's moons, is sometimes described as part of a binary system with Pluto, as the two bodies orbit a barycenter of gravity above their surfaces (i.e. they appear to "orbit each other"). Orcus (30.3–48.1 AU), is in the same 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune as Pluto, and is the largest such object after Pluto itself ...
For 76 years, Pluto was considered out solar system's ninth planet. So what caused it to lose its planetary status? Find out on this episode of "Space, Down to Earth"!
RM: So many adults get their sense of wonder beaten out of them, but you still seem genuinely enchanted by what’s out there. AB: I am. In our work, we can plan it out, but there’s so much that we just don’t know. And those pictures from Pluto are a testament to it. It’s like being a child again, when everything was new and pretty wondrous.
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