Why is Eris a dwarf planet? Eris was originally thought to be the tenth planet in the Milky Way solar system. It is the largest know dwarf planet in existence. Astronomers made the discovery in 2005 at the Palomar Observatory, in California. This discovery was subsequently made through telescopic images from 2003. It has a … Read more
Haumea is another dwarf planet that was discovered to be orbiting beyond Pluto in 2003. It was discovered by a group of American astronomers at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Haumea is an unusual dwarf planet with a rapid rotational period that spans approximately 3.92 hours and an orbital period of 285.46 years. It has a … Read more
There is little known about this dwarf planet. Makemake was discovered in 2005 by astronomers M.E. Brown, D.L. Rabinowitz, and C.A. Trujilla at the Palomar Observatory. At the size of 900 miles in diameter, gravity has helped to make it round in shape. Makemake approximately 306 Earth years to travel around the Sun. It is … Read more
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union dubbed Ceres as another dwarf planet in the Milky Way Galaxy. It is also the largest asteroid in the main asteroid belt and the first one ever discovered. In 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres while working at the Palmer Observatory. Ceres has a radius of 304 miles, and it … Read more
Pluto was discovery was more of an accident than an accurate prediction based on mathematical calculations based on a model. This took place on February 18, 1930, in Flagstaff, Arizona, by an amateur astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh. He discovered it in the constellation Gemini. While it was once the ninth and smallest planet in our solar … Read more
Neptune, the planet of troublemakers, was, at first glance, thought by Galileo to be only a star. The reasoning behind that thought was the inability to see it with the naked eye. While it is the third in a succession of the most massive planets, it is also the planet farthest from the Sun at … Read more
One of the questions that we will cover in this article is, why does Uranus spin backward? Well, that is an interesting story and we will get to that in just a moment. Uranus has the most negligible mass of the four giant Jovian planets. This means the planets are gas giants that have no … Read more
Have you heard that Saturn is a failed star? That is what some have speculated and today, we will be looking into that and a few other questions that surround Saturn. But first, we will go over a few of the more common planetary facts that distinguish it from others in our solar system. Saturn … Read more