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Sorry, I just heard on the news about it, although it may well be old news.:smile:
Here we go. In 2006 it was down graded to a dwarf planet because it fails the 3rd requirement in being a planet.

2006: IAU classification
The debate came to a head in 2006 with an IAU resolution that created an official definition for the term "planet". According to this resolution, there are three main conditions for an object to be considered a 'planet':
  1. The object must be in orbit around the Sun.
  2. The object must be massive enough to be a sphere by its own gravitational force. More specifically, its own gravity should pull it into a shape of hydrostatic equilibrium.
  3. It must have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.

Pluto fails to meet the third condition, because its mass is only 0.07 times that of the mass of the other objects in its orbit (Earth's mass, by contrast, is 1.7 million times the remaining mass in its own orbit). The IAU further resolved that Pluto be classified in the simultaneously created dwarf planet category, and that it act as the prototype for the plutoid category of trans-Neptunian objects, in which it would be separately, but concurrently, classified.
 

Accy cyclist

Legendary Member
No Sunday night pub tonight, the usual girl behind the bar is away on holiday She makes a fuss of my little mutt so if she's not there he frets.:whistle:
 
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