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Dwarf Planet

A dwarf planet is a planetary-mass object that is neither a true planet nor a natural satellite. That is, it is in direct orbit of a star, and is massive enough for its gravity to compress it into a hydrostatically equilibrious shape (usually a spheroid), but has not cleared the neighborhood of other material around its orbit.

The term dwarf planet was adopted in 2006 as part of a three-way categorization of bodies orbiting the Sun, brought about by an increase in discoveries of objects farther away from the Sun than Neptune that rivaled Pluto in size, and finally precipitated by the discovery of an even more massive object, Eris. The exclusion of dwarf planets from the roster of planets by the IAU has been both praised and criticized.

As of July 2008 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) recognizes five dwarf planets: Ceres in the asteroid belt, and Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris in the outer Solar System.

What is a dwarf planet?

Astronomers are constantly discovering new objects that they need to describe. In 2006, they decided on a new class - dwarf planets. These are small, almost round bodies that orbit the Sun in a belt of other objects. The solar system is also full of other small bodies, including moons that orbit planets, asteroids, Kuiper Belt Objects that form a flattened belt beyond Neptune, and comets.

Streakers

Meteors occur in the sky every night. They are fleeting streaks of lightcause by comet dust particles travelling through Earth's atmosphere. They are best spotted during one of the 20 or so annual meteor showers.

From out of the sky

• Rocks from the space sometimes make it to Earth andcare known as meteorites.
• Most come from asteroids but some originate from the Moon and Mars.
• About 3,000 meteorites weighing more than 1 kg (2 lb) land on Earth every year - most fall into the oceans.
• More than 22,500 meteorites have been collected and catalogued
• The largest meteorite ever found landed in Hoba West, Namibia in 1920. It weighed 66 tonnes.
• There are three main types of meteorites.
• Stony
  
  
  
• Iron
  
• Stony-iron
  

Mysterious moons

Miranda

This is the smallest of uranus's five major moons. Its rugged surface covered with huge canyons.

lo

This moon of jupiter is covered in active volacnoes that are constantly renewing its surface. 

Titan

The largest of Satur's moons, it is the only planetary moon to have a thick atmoshere

Phobos

Mars has two tiny moons. Phobos, the largest, which is 27 km (17 miles) across, and Deimos.

Top 10 biggest moons

Name                               Diameter               parent planet

01. Ganymade                   5,260 km                  Jupiter
  02. Titan                           5,150 km                  Saturn   

03. Callisto                        4,820 km                  Jupiter      

04. lo                                 3,640 km                 Jupiter      

05. Moon                            3,480 km                 Earth         

06. Europa                          3,120 km                Jupiter       

07. Triton                           2,710 km                Neptune      

08. Titania                         1,580 km                Uranus       

09. Rhea                            1,530 km                Saturn         

10. Oberon                         1,520 km               Uranus         

Impact craters

Most extraterrestial bodies heading for Earth are broken up as they pass through the atmosphere, but sometimes big objects or parts of them, survive and crash onto the surface as meteorites, gouging out vast craters. include the Manicouagan Crater, seen here from space.

name              location              diameter          age (years)
Vredefort                            South Africa                                    300 km                               more than 2 billion
Sudbury                                Canada                                          250 km                                  1.85 billion        
Chicxulub                             Mexico                                           170 km                                    65 million        
Popigai                                 Russia                                            100 km                                   35.7 million      
Manicouagan                        Canada                                           100 km                                   214 million       

Fast Facts
Asteroids
01. Asteroids are remains of a rocky planet that failed to form between Mars and Jupiter 4.5 billion years ago.
02. The remains did not stick together but smashed into each other.
03. These rocky and metallic objects were scattered throughout the solar system crashing into planets.
04. Eventually, a belt of rocky bits, known as the Main Belt, settled between Mars and Jupiter, plus a small number of asteroids on other orbits around the Sun.
05. Some asteroids known as near-Earth asteroids, travel closed to the earth and have the potential to hit it.

Tell me more: comet anatomy

01.Nucleus: The heart of the comet is an irregular-shaped ball of snow and dust covered in a thin crust of dust.

02. Coma: As the comet moves close to the Sun it forms a huge head of gas and dust.

03. Gas tail: The sun's heat turns the nucleus snow to gas, which flows out a blue tail.

04. Dust tail: Dust released from the nucleus trails away from the coma as a white tail.

Cool comets

• Comets are huge dirty snowballs left over from when the gaint planets formed.
• Their path take them in all directions as they orbit around the Sun.
• There are trillions of comets. They make a vast sphere, called the oort cloud, which surrounds the planetary part of the solar system.
• Some comets have left the Oort Cloud and now orbit in the inner solar system returning again and again to the Earth's sky.

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