New name for demoted planet Pluto

Pluto and its moons, Charon, Hydra and Nix

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Thursday, 12, Jun 2008 11:47

Almost two years after Pluto was stripped of its planet status scientists haven given it back some credibility in the cosmos with a new name.

Pluto was named as a planet in 1930 but more recent discoveries of larger bodies in the solar system forced the issue of what is and is not a planet into the spotlight.

Thousands of astronomers debated the issue in 2006 and decided to strip Pluto of its planet status, describing it instead as a dwarf planet.

Now the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has decided that the name of the category for dwarf planets such as Pluto should be 'plutoid'.

Celestial bodies will be defined as a plutoid if they are in orbit around the Sun at a distance greater than that of Neptune and fulfil a number of gravitational requirements.

So far the two known and named plutoids are Pluto and Eris; the latter being a rocky object lying in the Kuiper Belt, the region of ancient bodies far beyond Neptune's orbit.

It is expected that more plutoids will be named as science progresses and new discoveries are made.