Pluto before Charon was discovered. Pluto is more than twice the diameter and a dozen times the mass of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. It is less massive than the dwarf planet Eris, a trans-Neptunian object discovered in 2005, though Pluto has a larger diameter of 2376.6 km compared to Eris's approximate diameter of 2326 km. Determinations of Pluto's size had been complicated by its atmosphere, and hydrocarbon haze. In March 2014, Lellouch, de Bergh et al. published findings regarding methane mixing ratios in Pluto's atmosphere consistent with a Plutonian diameter greater than 2360 km,
Dwarf planet planet, and accepted other dwarf planets such as Ceres and Eris, as well as the larger moons, as additional planets. Several years before the IAU definition, he used orbital characteristics to separate "überplanets" (the dominant eight) from "unterplanets" (the dwarf planets), considering both types "planets". Nineteen moons are known to be massive enough to have relaxed into a rounded shape under their own gravity, and seven of them are more massive than either Eris or Pluto. They are not physically distinct from the dwarf planets, but are not dwarf planets because they do not directly orbit the Sun. The seven