As a group, we collectively decided to dedicate this piece of literacy excellence to Neil Armstrong. May he rest in peace.

What are dwarf planets?

Dwarf planets are celestial bodies that closely resemble planets, but are missing a few criteria to classify them as such. 

They are round in shape and do orbit the sun, but are much smaller than planets and are not able to clear the space around their orbit. 

There are 5 main dwarf planets, Ceres, Pluto, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris. 

The 2 criteria that distinguish a planet from a dwarf planet are size and if they can clear the area around its orbit. 

In the past, these dwarf planets were considered planets, and other matters were identified as asteroids. 100's of years later, scientists realized these 5 planets were way smaller than they originally thought but were too big to be asteroids. This is when dwarf planets became a classification. 

Ceres:

Ceres was discovered by an Italian astronomer in 1801. 

It was originally classified as a planet, and then later became classified as the biggest asteroid in the asteroid belt. It stayed this way until 2005 when Eris was discovered. They realized Ceres was too big to be an asteroid and became classified as a dwarf planet. 

Ceres is the smallest dwarf planet, but the largest thing in the asteroid belt. It has a diameter of 950km, and alone makes up 1/3 of the asteroid's belt mass. In the asteroid belt, it is located between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. 

For reference, the moon is 48 times bigger than the size of Ceres.

Ceres is the closest dwarf planet to the sun, and because it's located in the orbits between Mars and Jupiter, it is the only dwarf planet that's located in our inner solar system. It also is the only dwarf planet with no moons.

Because Ceres was classified as an asteroid for over 50 years and only became a dwarf planet in the last 15 years, scientists still have a lot to discover about it. The first spacecraft was sent to orbit Ceres in 2015, this project was called Dawn. 

This mission discovered salt deposits and water, which leaves us with so much more to explore because these are some of the building blocks of life. They also discovered glowing bright spots, which they concluded must have come from a volcano that had to have been active at some point. 

Let's take a look at Ceres size compared to the size of Earth's moon! 

1) Take a piece of paper, a ruler, and a pencil 

2) In the middle of the paper make a dot.  From that dot make a 5-inch radius line, creating the circle.  This makes the circle size of the moon. 

3) From that same middle dot make a line that is a 1.2-inch radius, this creates the circle of Ceres. 

Scale: 1inch (2.5cm) = 220 miles (325 km)

Haumea: 

Haumea was discovered in 2003 and is located in the Kuiper Belt.  The Kuiper Belt is beyond the orbit of Neptune.  Haumea is about the same size as Pluto.  Haumea is one of the fastest rotating large objects in space.  Haumea rotates so fast that its shape is distorted and looks similar to a football.  It takes Haumea 4 hours to make a full rotation.  However, it takes 285 Earth years to make a rotation around the sun.  

Haumea has a radius of about 385 miles.  In comparison to Earth, Haumea is about 1/14th the size of the earth.  If Earth was the size of a nickel, then Haumea would be about as big as a sesame seed.  

Haumea is 43 astronomical units away from this sun.  For reference 1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the sun.  Since Haumea is so far from the sun it takes 6 hours for sunlight to reach this dwarf planet. 

Haumea is extremely cold and has no evidence of conditions suitable for life.  It is believed that this planet is made of rock and has a coating of ice. 

In 2005 Haumea's moons were discovered. Haumea has two moons.  Namaka is the inner moon and Hi'iaka is the outer moon.  

In 2008 Haumea ditched its nickname of Santa and became Haumea, recognized as a dwarf planet. 

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, a donut-shaped region of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. There may be millions of these icy objects, collectively referred to as Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) or trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), in this distant region of our solar system.

Pluto, which is smaller than Earth’s Moon, has a heart-shaped glacier that’s the size of Texas and Oklahoma. This fascinating world has blue skies, spinning moons, mountains as high as the Rockies, and it snows – but the snow is red.

Pluto

Pluto orbits the Sun about 3.6 billion miles (5.8 billion km) away on average, about 40 times as far as Earth, in a region called the Kuiper Belt.

A year on Pluto is 248 Earth years. A day on Pluto lasts 153 hours or about 6 Earth days.

Pluto has 5 moons. The largest, Charon, is so big that Pluto and Charon orbit each other like a double planet.

Pluto: Fun Facts

Pluto’s surface is far too cold, -378 to -396 degrees F (-228 to -238 C), to sustain life as we know it.

The only spacecraft to visit Pluto is NASA’s New Horizons, which passed close by in July 2015.

Makemake is also located in the Kuiper Belt. This dwarf planet is a donut-shaped region of icy bodies; it lays just beyond the orbit of Neptune.

Makemake is the second brightest dwarf planet from earth.

It takes around three-hundred and fifty-three Earth years for this dwarf planet to make one entire rotation around the Sun. Makemake was first seen in March of 2005 by M.E. Brown, C.A. Trujillo, and D.L. Rabinowitz at the Palomar Observatory. Makemake's unofficial codename was Easter bunny.

Makemake