The World Astronomical Union throws Pluto a bone - it and the trans-Neptunian bodies will be called plutoids

In doing so, the union is trying to quell the debate that has arisen since it was decided to remove Pluto from its status as a planet at the union's plenary session held in Prague in August 2006

Special project - gathering all the news related to the decision to change the status of Pluto

Almost two years after the plenary session of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) conference that convened in Prague in August 2006 decided by a majority of votes to remove Pluto from its status as a "real" planet to a new category - dwarf planets, the union decided, as promised, on a name for the trans-Neptunian dwarf planets similar to Pluto. The name "plutoids" was proposed and accepted by the IAU at its last meeting in Oslo, Norway.

Below is the definition of a Plutoid: "A celestial body that orbits the Sun at a greater distance than Neptune and that has sufficient mass to overcome the difficulty of the object and therefore will have a hydrostatic equilibrium or in other words a shape close to a sphere. Also, the second definition of a dwarf planet also applies to it - that it has not cleared the environment near its orbit of other objects.

The two plutoids known today are Pluto and Eris. Several other similar bodies that were discovered and will be discovered during the coming years mainly thanks to the New Horizon mission that will reach Pluto and the Kuiper belt in 2015, will also be given official names.

Ceres, formerly the largest asteroid, and now also in dwarf planet status, would not be considered a plutoid because it is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers believe that Ceres is the only object of its kind, and therefore a separate name will be assigned to the hook-like dwarf planets at a later date.

The World Astronomical Union is the body responsible for naming bodies in the solar system, including planets, dwarf planets and moons since the beginning of the 20th century, and it is also the body that examines the correctness of names given to formations on the planets and other bodies in the solar system.

The World Astronomical Union approved to call these bodies in English plutoid, in French plutoïde and in Spanish plutoide. For the Hebrew version we will have to make do with the phonetic translation that I made here on the Hidan website.