Dwarf planets, artwork. A dwarf planet is a planetary mass object orbiting the Sun, but not a true planet or satellite. They are massive enough for their self- gravities to crush them into spheres but they have not cleared the neighborhood of other material around their orbits. Ceres, for example, orbits in the asteroid belt, its orbit shared with those of the other asteroids. All the other dwarf planets so far known are found beyond Neptune, in a region of the Solar system full of debris called the Kuiper belt. This illustration shows the five currently confirmed dwarf planets in the Solar System – as of 2018. From left clockwise they are Pluto, Eris, Ceres, Makemake and Haumea. Haumea has an ellipsoidal shape rather than a sphere, owing to its rapid spin. | |
Licence : | Droits gérés |
Crédit: | Science Photo Library / Garlick, Mark |
Taille de l’image : | 5185 px × 3370 px |
Model Release : | Non requis |
Property Release : | Non requis |
Restrictions : | - |