In Roman mythology, Pluto is the god and ruler of the dead. For a return mission to the dwarf planet, Howett and her colleagues opted for the name Persephone, after Pluto's wife and "queen of the ...

"Makemake is one of the largest and brightest icy worlds beyond Neptune, and its surface is dominated by frozen methane," ...

Pluto has long been one of the most debated celestial bodies in our solar system. Once classified as the ninth planet, it was ...

At the vast edge of the solar system, Pluto has long been perceived as a cold and lonely dwarf planet. However, a recent ...

Traditional views hold that Pluto formed in the cold Kuiper Belt, gradually accumulating ice and rock. Over the long ages, the decay of radioactive elements within the rocks released heat, gradually ...

Earth has a newly-discovered neighbor in the solar system. But the heavenly body – possibly a dwarf planet à la Pluto – isn't a frequent visitor. Located beyond Neptune, its extreme orbit ...

Webb uncovers methane on Makemake, showing the icy dwarf planet is more active than once thought - just like Pluto.

What if Pluto wasn’t the end? What if our Solar System hides dozens - maybe hundreds - of strange frozen worlds beyond ...

Images of Pluto captured by NASA's New Horizons mission have revealed a new surprise: ice volcanoes. The spacecraft performed a flyby of the dwarf planet and its moons in July 2015, and the insights ...

Eight years after being reduced to a "dwarf planet" by the International Astronomical Union in 2006, our far distant cousin is finally getting some real push to be upgraded back to the ninth "planet" ...

A Southwest Research Institute-led team has reported the first detection of gas on the distant dwarf planet Makemake, using ...