What is pluto considered

Pluto was found to be smaller and less massive than all the other planets. Moreover, its orbit is highly inclined 17 degrees relative to the ecliptic, the plane defined by Earth's orbit around the Sun. The other planetary orbits have smaller inclinations. In the early 21st century, astronomers were finding bodies of comparable size beyond Pluto, such as Sedna, Eris, Makemake, and others. These discoveries prompted the question: should the IAU confer planetary status on all these other worlds?

First, a body has to have established a stable orbit around the Sun. Thousands of bodies meet this condition. Secondly, a body has to have developed a spheroidal shape. When a body is sufficiently large and massive, gravity will mold it into a spheroid. Pluto fulfills this condition. Third, and finally, the body has to have cleared its debris field. Burney, just 11 years old, knew that the other planets were named after mythical figures, so she proposed the Roman god of the underworld: Pluto.

By that point, the definition of a planet had already experienced some shifts. In , astronomers deemed Ceres, a rocky object they had spotted between Mars and Jupiter, a planet, but 50 years later, after further observations, they designated it as an asteroid.

Percival Lowell, the namesake of the Arizona observatory where Pluto was first photographed, had predicted that a ninth planet lurked somewhere deeper in the solar system, and Tombaugh and his colleagues believed they had found it. It was not, as Lowell had imagined, seven times more massive than Earth, but a tiny thing, smaller than the moon. And compared with the other planets, the specifics of its year orbit were weird too. Still, Pluto stayed a planet. Then, in the s, astronomers started finding icy objects beyond Neptune.

Which brings us to that fateful meeting in Prague. But by the end of the week, the idea was out, and the attendees had settled on a new set of criteria for a planet: It must orbit the sun, be big enough for gravity to have smoothed it into a sphere, and be gravitationally dominant enough to clear other objects out of its orbital zone. The last rule disqualified Pluto. Read: What Pluto and California have in common.

The decision was supposed to mark the end of the Pluto discussion, not spark more debate. In the ensuing years, the arguments have settled into two camps. Majestic Mountains and Frozen Plains. Kid-Friendly Pluto Pluto is a dwarf planet that lies in the Kuiper Belt, an area full of icy bodies and other dwarf planets out past Neptune.

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