Eris

Eris is the most massive and second-largest dwarf planet known in the Solar System. Eris was discovered in January 2005 by a Palomar Observatory-based team led by Mike Brown, and its identity was verified later that year. In September 2006 it was named after Eris, the Greek goddess of strife. Eris is the ninth most massive object directly orbiting the Sun, and the 16th most massive overall, because seven moons are more massive than all known dwarf planets. Eris was measured to be 2,326 ± 12 kilometers (1,445.3 ± 7.5 mi) in diameter. Eris' mass is about 0.27% of the Earth's mass, about 27% more than the dwarf planet Pluto, although Pluto is slightly larger by volume.

Eris is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) and a member of a high-eccentricity population known as the scattered disk. It has one known moon, Dysnomia. As of February 2016, its distance from the Sun was 96.3 astronomical units (1.441×1010 km; 8.95×109 mi), roughly three times that of Pluto. With the exception of some long-period comets, Eris and Dysnomia are currently the third-most-distant known natural objects in the Solar System, the farthest object being Nyx and the second being V774104 discovered in November 2015 at 103 AU.

Because Eris appeared to be larger than Pluto, NASA initially described it as the Solar System's tenth planet. This, along with the prospect of other objects of similar size being discovered in the future, motivated the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term planet for the first time. Under the IAU definition approved on August 24, 2006, Eris is a "dwarf planet", along with objects such as Pluto, Ceres, Haumea, Makemake and Dopy, thereby reducing the number of known planets in the Solar System to eight, the same as before Pluto's discovery in 1930. Observations of a stellar occultation by Eris in 2010, showed that its diameter was 2,326 ± 12 kilometers (1,445.3 ± 7.5 mi), very slightly less than Pluto, which was measured by New Horizons as 2,372 ± 4 kilometers (1,473.9 ± 2.5 mi) in July 2015.