It was a burning question of mine for a while now:

I understand that dwarf planets like Pluto and Ceres aren’t considered planets of the solar system, but why are they called ‘dwarf PLANETS’ if they aren’t planets.

And no one really says, “the sun isn’t a star, it’s a Dwarf Star”. Nor is it declassified as one because of it.

So, why are dwarf planets not planets, but dwarf stars are stars?

  • HubertManne
    2•4 hours ago

    dwarf planets was created as a term because of pluto. It had to much significance at this point to just call it an asteroid but if it was recognized as not a planet from the get go then we likely would not have the designation. They redefined the definition of a planet in general when it was realized there were to many large objects in the oort cloud so it had to be tightened up since otherwise we would be left with two types of planets and one would be in the asteroid belt and 3 more in the oort cloud with likely many more to come up and these objects most people would not consider them a real planet.