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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: 3.4 km (2.1 mi) Norgay Montes, Tombaugh Regio [72] 45 K [73] 35 K [73] Eris: 41 K [74] 30 K [74] Makemake: Haumea: The bodies included in this table are: (1) planemos; (2) major planets, dwarf planets, or moons of major or dwarf planets, or stars; (3) hydrostatically round so as to be able to provide a geodetic datum line.
For the giant planets, the "radius" is defined as the distance from the center at which the atmosphere reaches 1 bar of atmospheric pressure. [ 11 ] Because Sedna and 2002 MS 4 have no known moons, directly determining their mass is impossible without sending a probe (estimated to be from 1.7x10 21 to 6.1×10 21 kg for Sedna [ 12 ] ).
Neptune-crossing minor planets; Non-trojan minor planets. Centaurs; Damocloids; Trans-Neptunian objects (beyond the orbit of Neptune) Kuiper-belt objects (KBOs) Plutinos. Orcus, a dwarf planet. Vanth; Pluto, a dwarf planet. Complete list of Pluto's natural satellites. Charon; Twotinos; Cubewanos (classical objects) Haumea, a dwarf planet ...
Like Pluto, its orbit is highly eccentric, with a perihelion of 38.2 AU (roughly Pluto's distance from the Sun) and an aphelion of 97.6 AU, and steeply inclined to the ecliptic plane at an angle of 44°. [220] Gonggong (33.8–101.2 AU) is a dwarf planet in a comparable orbit to Eris, except that it is in a 3:10 resonance with Neptune.
It is about half the diameter and an eighth the mass of Pluto, a dwarf planet that resides in a frigid region of the outer Solar System called the Kuiper Belt, beyond the most distant planet Neptune.
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 ...
There are at least 19 natural satellites in the Solar System that are known to be massive enough to be close to hydrostatic equilibrium: seven of Saturn, five of Uranus, four of Jupiter, and one each of Earth, Neptune, and Pluto. Alan Stern calls these satellite planets, although the term major moon is more common.