What is a brown dwarf? Answer: In order to understand what is a brown dwarf, we need to understand the difference between a star and a planet. It is not easy to tell a star from a planet …
The brown dwarf, called Gliese 229B (GL229B), is a small companion to a cool, red star called Gliese 229. This binary star system is located 19 light-years from Earth. GL229B is estimated …
It takes 310 Earth years for this dwarf planet to make one orbit around the Sun. Makemake was first observed in 2005 by a team of astronomers led by Michael Brown. Its codename was …
Eris, the largest known dwarf planet, was first detected in data collected in October of 2003. It was not identified until January of 2005. Mike Brown and his team of astronomers discovered what …
Eris is the largest known dwarf planet in our solar system. It is a little larger than Pluto. Eris is about 2400 kilometers wide. Eris was first found by a team of astronomers at Palomar …
The word quasar is short for "quasi-stellar radio source". This name, which means star-like emitters of radio waves, was given in the 1960s when quasars were first detected. The name …
Haumea was first discovered in 2004. It was accepted as one of our dwarf planets by the International Astronomical Union in 2008. Before being officially named, it was called Santa by …
Pluto was re-classified as a dwarf planet in August 2006. Until the fly-by of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015, little was known about Pluto. It was believed to be composed of rock and ice.
Astronomers had been looking for a ninth planet since 1905. In February of 1930, Clyde Tombaugh found proof of a new object in our solar system. He named the object Pluto. From …