dwarf planetary

English

Etymology

From dwarf planet and planetary.

Adjective

dwarf planetary (comparative more dwarf planetary, superlative most dwarf planetary)

1. Of or relating to dwarf planets.
   • 2009, Laurence A. Marschall, Stephen P. Maran, Pluto Confidential: An Insider Account of the Ongoing Battles over the Status of Pluto, Dallas, Tex.: BenBella Books, →ISBN, page 186:

     […] because NASA supports “planetary” astronomy but has no division for “dwarf planetary” astronomy.

   • 2010, Marcus D’Ambrose, Douglas Palermo, Noel Rogers, Heroes and Hierophants, Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 275:

     One planet in a system, third one out from the orbit-star. While its planetary brethren (and dwarf planetary brethren, baby siblings in an increasingly strained metaphor) develop Novelties like rings or Great Red Sports, this world develops the strangest novelty of all. / Life.

   • 2014, Richard Grossinger, The Night Sky: Soul and Cosmos; The Physics and Metaphysics of the Stars and Planets, updated and expanded edition, Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, →ISBN:

     By 2012 the distinction between our solar system’s inner rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt) and its outer gas and ice giants (where most of the nonsolar mass resides) had also been drawn more definitively and generically, with a second asteroid-like cluster, the Kuiper Belt (undesignated in 1988), added to demarcate a planetary (or “dwarf planetary”) sphere beyond Neptune. […] As the dwarf-planetary sublimation of Mars, Eris is “very strong, volatile, and vicious”; she hates to be left out of anything, especially good old fracases and brouhahas. Acting as psycho as the situation allows, she is the last god to leave the battlefield, as she feeds off the mayhem and madness of destruction while having the best time of all.

   • 2016, Lisa Messeri, Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, →ISBN:

     Pluto failed to dominate its orbit and thus was not a planet. This reclassification had little effect on scientific practice. Scientists studying Pluto refer to themselves as planetary scientists (not dwarf planetary scientists).

   • 2021, Gale M. Sinatra, Barbara K. Hofer, Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 16:

     In Chapter 7, “How Do Emotions and Attitudes Influence Science Understanding?,” we challenge the notion of science as a cold, dispassionate enterprise and show how learning about science involves the full range of emotions. Consider the overwhelmingly negative reaction of many members of the public when Pluto was demoted to dwarf planetary status.

   • 2023, Martin Beech, Mind the Gap: The Labyrinthine Story of Planetary Orbits, Mathematics, and the Titius-Bode Rule, World Scientific, →ISBN, page 230:

     Figure 8.8. The scale of the planetary and dwarf planetary regions of the solar system.