The debate over Pluto’s planetary status has been ongoing since its reclassification as a “dwarf planet” in 2006 by the ...

With a diameter of 1,440 miles, Pluto is farthest from the sun. While major planets make roughly circular orbits, Pluto ...

Pluto, therefore, is not the gravitationally dominant object in its neighborhood — and thus, not a planet, according to the new definition. But this framework drew immediate criticism.

If the IAU changes the definition of planet to include Pluto then we would have to include perhaps hundreds of other objects, for consistency. Consequently, the definition is not likely to change.

Critics counter that Ceres, which is only 580 miles wide, was oly considered a planet for a year, while Pluto has been a major planet for more than 70 years. In addition, they say, there was ...

Although controversy still surrounds the demotion of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet, scientists had their reasons for changing Pluto's classification. Here's why Pluto is no longer considered a ...

Right from the start, Pluto was a weird one. Its orbit was not on the plane of the solar system, and it crept inside Neptune’s orbit from time to time. As we got better telescopes in the 1970s ...

On January 17, 2006 the New Horizons mission will launch for Pluto, the last unexplored planet of the solar system — or is it? Some scientists now claim that Pluto does not deserve its planetary ...

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.