How Many Planets are in the Solar System?
I’m just going to warn you, this is a controversial topic. Some people get pretty grumpy when you ask: how many planets are in the Solar System? Is it eight, ten, or more?
I promise you this, though, we’re never going back to nine planets… ever.
When many of us grew up, there were nine planets in the Solar System. It was like a fixed point in our brains.
As kids, memorizing this list was an early right of passage of nerd pride: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
But then in 2005, Mike Brown discovered Eris, an icy object thought to be about the same size as Pluto, out beyond its orbit.
That would bring the total number of planets to ten. Right? There’s no turning back, textbooks would need to be changed.
In order to settle the dispute, the International Astronomical Union met in 2006, and argued for, and against Pluto’s planethood. Some astronomers advocated widening the number of planets to twelve, including Pluto, its moon Charon, the Asteroid Ceres, and the newly discovered Eris.
In the end, they changed the definition of what makes a planet, and sadly, Pluto doesn’t make the cut:
Here are the new requirements of planethood status:
- A planet has to orbit the Sun. Okay fine, Pluto does that.
- A planet needs enough gravity to pull itself into a sphere. Okay, spherical. Pluto’s fine there too.
- A planet needs to have cleared out its orbit of other objects. Uh oh, Pluto hasn’t done that.
For example, planet Earth accounts for a million times the rest of the material in its orbit, while Pluto is just a fraction of the icy objects in its realm.
The final decision was to demote Pluto from planet to dwarf planet.
But don’t despair, Pluto is in good company.
Ceres. Image credit: NASA
Haumea, named after the Hawaiian goddess of fertility, is about a third the mass of Pluto, and has just enough gravity to pull itself into an ellipsoid, or egg shape. Even though it’s smaller, it’s got moons of its own.
Makemake. Credit: NASA
Eris is the most massive known dwarf planet, and the one that helped turn our definition of a planet upside-down. It’s 27% more massive than Pluto and the ninth most massive body that orbits the Sun. It even has a moon: Dysnomia.
Pluto. Credit: ESO
Want an easy way to remember the eight planets, in order? Just remember this mnemonic: my very excellent mother just served us noodles.
For all you currently writing angry tweets to Mike Brown, hold on a sec. Changing Pluto’s categorization is an important step that really needed to happen.
The more we discover about our Universe, the more we realize just how strange and wonderful it is. When Pluto was discovered 80 years ago, we never could have expected the variety of objects in the Solar System. Categorizing Pluto as a dwarf planet helps us better describe our celestial home.
So, our Solar System now has eight planets, and five dwarf planets.
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The explanation based on the nine planet:but i suggest that there was jst nine planet in the solar system.how come the eight now in the solar system.joining the three dwarf planet that is the ceres,eris,and the makemake plus the pluto which is not part of the planet agin making twelve planet in the solar system.can u pls give more explanation based on that.send any information to my email box provided below.
I like the comments of Laurel Kornfeld, please let me know the present status of number of planets after the Aug 2008 meeting or any new development in this topic.
Thank you, M. Afzal. You can find the proceedings of the Great Planet Debate–some audio and some video–at this site:
http://gpd.jhuapl.edu/
For those of us who believe dwarf planets should be counted as a subclass of planets, the latest status is that our solar system now has 13 planets: four terrestrial planets, four jovian planets, and five dwarf planets. Haumea, formerly known as 2003EL61, was recognized as a dwarf planet in September. The current order of the planets from the sun is Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris–with more dwarf planets likely to come.
planet shlanet. who cares? as long as no alien is trying to take over my planet then im fine
pls tell me how many planets when you see all of them then send it back to
me and i will never send any bad thing to you even if i wanted to so help me out pretty pls
for me its easy if it orbits the sun and it is in are planetary system making it a planet just because its past the Kuiper belt or in it and small does not make it less of a planet
so for me Pluto Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. Ceres are planets
i think that pluto sould be a planet. the reason it was in our solar system ones just let it say ontill it leaves thats when we should onsederite a lost planet.
I didnt know that pluto was a dwarf planet I thoght it was normal planet.What else is about pluto?
In my opinion, however, I beleieve that there are more that 8 planets and 3 dwarf planets. I think that there are thousands of other planets out there, just that scientists haven’t gotten all the information they need, and we can’t give them all the money that they need to research these planets. I don’t know if I believe aliens or not, but I do believe that there is some sort of life up there.