Pluto

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Pluto is smallest planets of the Solar system, having only 2% of the mass of the Earth, smaller than many of the moons. It belongs to the Kuiper Belt, an asteroid belt outside the solar system. It is disputed if Pluto is a planet at all because of its small size and its unusual eccentric orbit that is highly inclined - maybe it is more an asteroid than a planet. The orbit takes him sometimes even closer to the Sun than Neptune.

Just as Neptune was predicted by irregularities in Uranus orbit, the existence of another planet was assumed because Neptune was assumed to have irregularities in its orbit, too. After an extensive search for this planet, Pluto was discovered 1930. But its mass is way too small to cause the meanderings in Neptunes Orbit - later it was found out that this is caused by a measuring error of its mass.

In 2003 there was found another Kuiper Belt object even larger than Pluto.

Pluto is named after a Roman god.

Moons

Pluto has a large moon called Charon. Two other smaller moons were discovered 2005. Charon is relatively large compared to Pluto. So Pluto and Charon are sometimes called a double planet, they are rotating around a barycenter which lays outside of Pluto.