If I ask you what is a Solar system ? You will be quick to answer that it consists of Sun and everything that orbits around it. That includes eight known planets or may be more that we can’t see yet, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, dust and ice particles. Wait a second, is it eight known planets or nine planets? Did we forget to count one planet? Let us count – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. But where is Pluto?

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by an American astronomer. An astronomer is a person who studies stars and other objects in space.

Pluto was known as the smallest planet in the solar system and the ninth planet from the sun. For a long time astronomers wondered if Pluto’s status as a planet was valid. Then in 2003, an astronomer saw a new object beyond Pluto. At first he thought he had found a new planet because the object he saw was larger than Pluto. He named the object Eris.

Now there is a group of astronomers that decides if the objects in space are planets or asteroids or dwarf planets. After a long discussion Pluto lost it’s planet status officially. It’s size is too small and it is too far from the sun.

So Pluto and objects like it are now called dwarf planets. If you already knew that just update your parents because I am sure they are still counting nine planets in the Solar system.