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Clyde William Tombaugh (/ ˈ t ɒ m b aʊ /; February 4, 1906 – January 17, 1997) was an American astronomer.He discovered Pluto in 1930, the first object to be discovered in what would later be identified as the Kuiper belt.
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.
Additional planets in the outer reaches of the Solar System, such as a ninth planet beyond Neptune or especially a tenth beyond Pluto (between the 1930 discovery of Pluto and its reclassification from planet to dwarf planet in 2006), appear regularly. Many different names for this hypothetical outermost planet have been used, the most common ...
Pluto was considered a planet up until 2006, when researchers at the International Astronomical Union voted to "demote" it to dwarf planet.
The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto, which for decades was regarded as a planet before the "dwarf" concept was adopted in 2006. Dwarf planets are capable of being geologically active, an expectation that was borne out in 2015 by the Dawn mission to Ceres and the New Horizons mission to Pluto.
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.
If you were born before the '90s you probably know that Pluto, besides the much discussed dwarf planet that we are all so crazy about these days, is also a Disney animated dog.
Pluto, along with many other dwarf planets in the outer solar system, is often thought of as dark, icy and barren – with a surface temperature of just −230°C. But now a new study, published ...