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As minor planet discoveries are confirmed, they are given a permanent number by the IAU's Minor Planet Center (MPC), and the discoverers can then submit names for them, following the IAU's naming conventions. The list below concerns those minor planets in the specified number-range that have received names, and explains the meanings of those names.
A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit around the Sun, massive enough to be gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve orbital dominance like the eight classical planets of the Solar System.
Sedna (minor-planet designation: 90377 Sedna) is a dwarf planet in the outermost reaches of the Solar System, orbiting the Sun far beyond the orbit of Neptune.Discovered in 2003, the frigid planetoid is one of the reddest known among Solar System bodies.
A planet usually has at least around 10,000 times the mass of any natural satellites that orbit it, with a correspondingly much larger diameter. [3] The Earth–Moon system is a unique exception in the Solar System; at 3,474 kilometres (2,158 miles) across, the Moon is 0.273 times the diameter of Earth and about 1 ⁄ 80 of its mass. [ 4 ]
This is a partial list of named minor planets, containing all those starting with the letter T, as of 1 July 2024.It is ordered in a case-insensitive, alphabetical manner and contains a total of 1,223 entries.
According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. [ a ] Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term minor planet , but that year's meeting reclassified minor planets and comets into dwarf planets and ...
The term 'dwarf planet' arguably contains two words, a noun (planet) and an adjective (dwarf). Thus, the term could suggest that a dwarf planet is a type of planet, even though the IAU explicitly defines a dwarf planet as not so being. By this formulation therefore, 'dwarf planet' and 'minor planet' are best considered compound nouns.
51 Pegasi b, officially named Dimidium / d ɪ ˈ m ɪ d i ə m /, is an extrasolar planet approximately 50 light-years (15 parsecs) away in the constellation of Pegasus.It was the first exoplanet to be discovered orbiting a main-sequence star, [3] the Sun-like 51 Pegasi, and marked a breakthrough in astronomical research.