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Found 675 results for dwarf planet

Mystery object in weird orbit beyond Neptune cannot be explained

10 August 2016

A new-found object orbiting at extreme angles to the planets hints at new puzzle in the outer solar system - in addition to Planet Nine

artist's impression of planets around a red dwarf star

Old planets always get too hot or cold for life in the end

27 July 2016

Searching for alien life on planets orbiting older stars may be fruitless - they nearly always lose their liquid water with time

Missing craters on Ceres may have been smoothed by a mud facial

26 July 2016

Ceres has surprisingly few large craters for a dwarf planet located in an asteroid belt, but its muddy composition could have wiped away the biggest impacts

Artist's impression of New Horizons reaching Pluto

Five incredible things we know about Pluto since 2015’s fly-by

14 July 2016

New Horizons buzzed by Pluto and its moons last July, giving us a front-row seat to see icy peaks, towering atmospheric haze, a kilometres-deep canyon and more

A detailed view of Pluto's surface taken by NASA's New Horizons craft

Pluto must have liquid ocean or it'd look like an overripe peach

22 June 2016

If Pluto’s inner sea froze recently, we should see ridges popping up in the dwarf planet's outer shell. Since we don’t, it's probably still liquid

How the sun abducted dwarf planets from an alien solar system

8 June 2016

The weird orbits of some bodies in the outer solar system reveal they are booty from an interstellar smash and grab raid, says astronomer Simon Portegies Zwart

Your explosive guide to the end of the universe

1 June 2016

Our sun will swell, our galaxy will collide with its neighbour and the universe could suddenly be swallowed by a vacuum bubble

Identity-crisis comet may really be closest asteroid to the sun

16 May 2016

Observations of a supposed comet that skirts close to the sun reveal it doesn't really act like one – so may be a different kind of space rock altogether