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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, a dwarf planet that typically orbits outside Neptune, is vastly small in comparison to Jupiter, and much farther away. The Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect was a hoax phenomenon purported to cause a noticeable short-term reduction in gravity on Earth that was invented for April Fools' Day by the English astronomer Patrick Moore ...
They determined Pluto's mass to be 1.31×10 22 kg; roughly one five-hundredth that of Earth or one-sixth that of the Moon, and far too small to account for the observed discrepancies in the orbits of the outer planets. Lowell's prediction had been a coincidence: If there was a Planet X, it was not Pluto.
For the small outer irregular moons of Uranus, such as Sycorax, which were not discovered by the Voyager 2 flyby, even different NASA web pages, such as the National Space Science Data Center [6] and JPL Solar System Dynamics, [5] give somewhat contradictory size and albedo estimates depending on which research paper is being cited.
In the 1990s, astronomers began to find objects in the same region of space as Pluto (now known as the Kuiper belt), and some even farther away. [11] Many of these shared several of Pluto's key orbital characteristics, and Pluto started being seen as the largest member of a new class of objects, the plutinos.
[39] [40] Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies (remnants from the Solar System's formation) and at least one dwarf planet—Pluto, which may be geologically active. [41] But while the asteroid belt is composed primarily of rock and metal, the Kuiper belt is composed largely of ices, such as methane, ammonia, and water.
Pluto is grey, Orcus is red, and Neptune is the white (stationary) dot at 5 o'clock. Uranus is blue, Saturn yellow, and Jupiter red. Orbits and sizes of the larger plutinos (and the reference non-plutino 2002 KX 14 ).
Penitentes are icy depressions formed by erosion and surrounded by tall spires. Pluto is the only planetary body other than Earth on which penitentes have been identified. Although penitentes have been hypothesized on Jupiter's satellite Europa, current theories suggest they may require an atmosphere to form. Moores and his colleagues ...