Minor planet

Uncommon card · No. 135170

A minor planet, according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term minor planet, but that year's meeting reclassified minor planets and comets into small Solar System bodies (SSSBs) and dwarf planets, including into the respective categories comets and Pluto, which were generally not considered minor planets. In contrast to the eight official planets of the Solar System, all minor planets fail to clear their orbital neighborhood. Minor planets include asteroids (near-Earth objects, Earth trojans, Mars trojans, Mars-crossers, main-belt asteroids and Jupiter trojans), as well as distant minor planets (Uranus trojans, Neptune trojans, centaurs and trans-Neptunian objects), most of which reside in the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc. As of June 2026, there are 1,544,016 known objects, divided into 895,910 numbered (secured...

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