Space & Astronomy
Dwarf Planets Ranked
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Updated:3/21/2026
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Dwarf Planet↕ | Location↕ | Diameter (km)↕ | Discovered↕ | Known For↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Pluto | Kuiper Belt | 2,377 | 1930 (Clyde Tombaugh) | The planet that got demoted and won the internet's heart — reclassified in 2006, New Horizons flyby in 2015 revealed a stunning world with a heart-shaped nitrogen glacier (Tombaugh Regio), mountains of water ice, possible subsurface ocean, thin atmosphere that snows frozen nitrogen, the most beloved dwarf planet, 'Pluto is still a planet in my heart' became a meme, the debate about its status continues |
Eris | Scattered disc (beyond Kuiper Belt) | 2,326 | 2005 (Mike Brown) | The dwarf planet that killed Pluto's planethood — slightly more massive than Pluto, its discovery forced the IAU to define 'planet' for the first time, named after the Greek goddess of discord (fitting), its moon is named Dysnomia (lawlessness), Mike Brown wrote 'How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming,' the most consequential discovery in modern planetary science, farther from the Sun than Pluto |
Ceres | Asteroid Belt (between Mars and Jupiter) | 940 | 1801 (Giuseppe Piazzi) | The queen of the asteroid belt — the largest object in the asteroid belt and the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system, Dawn spacecraft orbited it and found bright salt deposits in Occator Crater, may have a subsurface ocean with conditions suitable for life, was considered a planet for 50 years after discovery then demoted (sound familiar?), the dwarf planet closest to Earth |
Haumea | Kuiper Belt | 1,560 | 2004 (disputed: Brown vs Ortiz) | The egg-shaped world — spins so fast (4-hour rotation, fastest in the solar system) it's stretched into an ellipsoid, has rings (discovered in 2017, one of the smallest bodies known to have them), two tiny moons (Hi'iaka and Namaka), named after the Hawaiian goddess of fertility, the discovery credit is disputed between American and Spanish teams, the most unusually shaped large body in the solar system |
Makemake | Kuiper Belt | 1,430 | 2005 (Mike Brown's team) | The Easter Island dwarf planet — discovered around Easter 2005 and named after the Rapanui creation deity, one of the brightest objects in the Kuiper Belt, extremely cold surface (-243°C), has one small moon (S/2015 (136472) 1) discovered in 2016, reddish-brown surface likely covered in frozen methane and ethane, the dwarf planet we know the least about, no spacecraft has visited or is planned to visit |
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