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Pluto's origin and identity had long puzzled astronomers. One early hypothesis was that Pluto was an escaped moon of Neptune [161] knocked out of orbit by Neptune's largest moon, Triton. This idea was eventually rejected after dynamical studies showed it to be impossible because Pluto never approaches Neptune in its orbit. [162]
A diagram showing the major orbital resonances in the Kuiper belt caused by Neptune: the highlighted regions are the 2:3 resonance , the nonresonant "classical belt" (cubewanos), and the 1:2 resonance . Neptune's orbit has a profound impact on the region directly beyond it, known as the Kuiper belt.
The diagram illustrates the distribution of the known trans-Neptunian objects. Resonant objects are plotted in red. Orbital resonances with Neptune are marked with vertical bars: 1:1 marks the position of Neptune's orbit and its trojans; 2:3 marks the orbit of Pluto and plutinos; and 1:2, 2:5, etc
The James Webb Space Telescope's first images of Neptune, the mysterious ice giant that orbits in the far reaches of the outer solar system, were so ... The planet's 164-year orbit takes it ...
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 ...
One consequence of these resonances is that a separation of at least 30 AU is maintained when Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit. The minimum separation between the two bodies overall is 17 AU, while the minimum separation between Pluto and Uranus is just 11 AU [31] (see Pluto's orbit for detailed explanation and graphs).
A total of five planets are going retrograde between May and September: Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. "Retrograde" is a term used to describe when a planet's orbit appears to slow.
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 close to equilibrium, though some anomalies remain unexplained). [26] Ceres orbits in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. The others all orbit beyond Neptune.