New Planetoid Found Orbiting The Sun

Manhigh writes: "According to Space.com a rather large celestial body has been found orbiting the Sun in the Kuiper belt, beyond Neptune. It will probably never be classified as a planet since even Pluto's status as a planet is somewhat controversial. Here's an excerpt from the article: 'Under one assumption about the object's reflectivity (albedo), 2001 KX76 is probably 788 miles (1,270 kilometers), making it 44 miles larger across than Charon and even bigger than Ceres, the largest known asteroid.'"

Comments

Re:a couple of interesting things

[RedWizzard]

This suggests that Pluto and Charon are simply bodies within another asteriod belt and shouldn't have been classified as planets. And thus we shouldn't make the mistake of classifying this, too, as a planet, even though it is larger.

Charon is Pluto's moon so it's never been classified as a planet. One of those links of yours is about Chiron (which is a Centaur object - a sort of cross between an asteroid and a comet), but that has never been classified as a major planet either.

Also note that this object may be slightly larger than Charon but it is considerably smaller than Pluto (Charon is slightly over half the diameter and about 1/7 of the mass of Pluto). The arguments for and against Pluto being a major planet are both compelling and this discovery really doesn't add anything to either side of the debate.