In Roman mythology, Pluto is the god and ruler of the dead. For a return mission to the dwarf planet, Howett and her ...

Pluto fit that ancient description perfectly: it does not twinkle and appears to wander about the night sky, very unlike a star. But the definition of planet has changed many times over the centuries.

Pluto, once considered the ninth planet, remains one of the most mysterious objects in our solar system. Its icy surface and ...

A legitimate planet, the IAU declared: 1) orbits the Sun, 2) has a “nearly round shape,” and 3) “has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.” Pluto fails the third criterion.

For reference, Pluto’s average distance from the Sun is about 40 AU, so 2023 KQ14 is quite distant. At 23.4 billion miles (37.7 billion kilometers) away, light reflecting off Ammonite takes ...

Pluto was demoted to a newly createdcategory, "dwarf planet," in 2006, partly because of the discovery ayear earlier of Eris, another icy body from Pluto's neighborhood.

Pluto was considered a planet up until 2006, when researchers at the International Astronomical Union voted to "demote" it to dwarf planet.

Planet or not, Pluto has sparked public interest, particularly after the 2015 flyby of NASA’s New Horizons mission, which gave Earth the first up-close look at the distant object.

When Pluto was hurled from the pantheon of planets back in 2006, it could simply have slinked away, accepting its new title of “dwarf planet” without a fuss. But thanks to the undying support ...

On Tuesday, November 19, 2024, Pluto, our petite power planet of death, reckoning, descent, and dissent, is moving into the fixed airs of Aquarius, where it will rule and reign until 2043.

In the 1990s, astronomers began detecting planets around other stars. Then in the mid-2000s, they started to find more and more planet-like objects beyond Pluto, at the edge of our solar system.

Pluto was thus demoted to a “dwarf planet.” The demotion of the planet is quite simply “bulls***,” Alan Stern, principal investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto told ...