![]() In myth, Eris, pronounced Ee-ris, is a Greek goddess who was the personification of discord or strife. The reason she had not been noticed before is most searches for large outer Solar System objects have concentrated on the ecliptic plane. Like Pluto, she can range from being a great distance from the Sun, to being almost as close to Sun as Neptune. Unlike the eight official planets, whose orbits are fairly circular and lie roughly in the same plane as the Earth’s, Eris orbits above and below the other planets. Eris and her moon Dysnomia are currently the most distant known objects in the Solar System apart from long-period comets and space probes. Eris is also a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) native to a region of space beyond the Kuiper Belt known as the Scattered Disk. For awhile she was dubbed Xena, the warrior princess. Eris was first identified in January 2005 by a Palomar Observatory based team led by astronomer Mike Brown. ![]() Astronomers suspect that at least another forty known objects in the Solar System are dwarf planets, and estimate that another 200 dwarf planets may be found as the Kuiper Belt is explored.Įris is the largest known dwarf planet beyond Neptune and the ninth-largest body known to orbit the Sun directly. ![]() But the net result was Pluto’s demotion, the IAU defining a planet for the first time, and the creation of a whole new category of objects in our Solar System-dwarf planets. At first, she was heralded as the tenth planet, since she is larger than Pluto. Pluto was discovered in 1930 and was considered to be a planet for seventy-six years. “Truly, Eris is a goddess to fear.” Euripides, Phoenician Women
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