Pluto is No Longer a Planet

There's been an ongoing debate in planetary circles as to whether or not Pluto qualifies as a "planet" - despite the fact that everyone calls it a planet, some spoilsports insist that, no, Pluto does not deserve the title.

(Only the uber-est of uber-nerds care about these things, of course. What?)

Anyway, the one thing that the pro-planet crowd had on their side until today was that Pluto was one of the biggest "trans-neptunian objects". Until today, apparently.

The chilly world dubbed Xena on the outskirts of the solar system has as at least as much claim to be a planet as Pluto, according to a new study confirming that the "tenth planet" is by far the larger of the two.

Astronomers first spotted Xena, known more formally as UB 313, in 2003, but the discovery was not made public until July 2005. By then they realised it was amazingly distant – at times, about three times as far from the Sun as Pluto is.

Xena is about the size of the Earth's moon, accompanied by it's own moon - named Gabrielle.

Astronomers are apparently cute as bunnies.