Pity poor Pluto, the puny former planet is facing yet another indignity. Demoted from planethood a year ago into a new category of dwarf planet, it now turns out that it isn't even the biggest one of those.
"This is sort of Pluto's last stand," joked Emily L. Schaller of California Institute of Technology, co-author of a report in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.
When the International Astronomical Union redefined planets last year, it created the new subcategory dwarf planets, and Pluto was thought to be the largest in that group.
Planetary astronomy professor Michael E. Brown and graduate student Schaller found otherwise while studying Dysnomia, the moon of Eris, another dwarf planet.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070614/ap_on_sc/poor_pluto