dwarf planet
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AI overview
A dwarf planet is a space object massive enough to be round due to its own gravity, but unlike the eight major planets, it hasn't cleared away other objects from its orbital path. Dwarf planets matter because they help us understand the diversity of objects in our solar system and reveal how planets form and organize themselves.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit around the Sun, massive enough to be gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve orbital dominance like the eight classical planets of the Solar System. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto, which for decades was regarded as a planet before the "dwarf" concept was adopted in 2006. Many planetary geologists consider dwarf planets and planetary-mass moons to be planets, but since 2006 the IAU and many astronomers have excluded them from the roster of planets.
Dwarf planets are capable of being geologically active, an expectation that was borne out in 2015 by the Dawn mission to Ceres and the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Planetary geologists are therefore particularly interested in them.