The Dwarf Planet Eris Takes 558 Earth Years To Orbit The Sun

Fact of the day: The dwarf planet Eris takes 558 Earth years to orbit the sun.

Most dwarf planets are trans-neptunian objects, but some can orbit further inwards, such as Ceres, which orbits in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and mars. Most of the trans-neptunian dwarf planets have highly elliptical orbits, like Eris.
The most famous of the dwarf planets is Pluto, as it was previously classified as a planet, but is now classified as a dwarf planet because it did not meet the criteria needed for it to be classified as a planet. These are the criteria:

• The object must be in orbit around the sun.

• The object has to be massive enough for it own gravity to form it into a round shape.

• The object must have cleared the area in its orbit (anything that meets the above criteria but not this one is classified as a dwarf planet).

There are five main dwarf planets: Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake.


Ceres

Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt. It is around 945 km in diameter, and the Moon is around 3.5 times the diameter of Ceres. It contains approximately one third of the mass of the entire asteroid belt. It takes 4.6 Earth years to orbit the sun and takes 9 hours and 4 minutes to rotate once on its axis.

(below) Ceres



Pluto

Pluto is the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system. It has a diameter of around 2380 kilometres, but there have been several measurements made, but all vary slightly. Pluto takes 248 Earth years to orbit the sun, and takes approximately 153 hours to rotate once on its axis.

(below) Pluto



Eris

Eris is the dwarf planet with the most mass, and also takes the longest to orbit around the sun (fact of the day). It is the second most distant known natural object in the solar system, at 96,.3 astronomical units away from the sun (more than triple the distance away from the sun than Neptune). It is the largest object in the solar system that has not been visited by spacecraft. Eris takes 558 Earth years to orbit the sun.

(below) Artists impression of Eris. There are no accurate images of Eris as it has not been visited by spacecraft.



Haumea

Haumea has not been observed in great detail, and as a result of this, there is not much information on it. It takes Haumea 284 Earth years to orbit the sun.

(below) An artists impression of Haumea.


Makemake

Makemake has not been visited by spacecraft. It takes Makemake 310 Earth years to orbit the sun once.

(below) Makemake as seen from Earth


Images from NASA

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