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Exploring the dwarf planets

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This year, NASA's Dawn and New Horizons rendezvoused with Ceres and Pluto, respectively. These worlds, despite their modest sizes, have much to teach us about the accretion of the Solar System and its dynamical evolution.

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Figure 1: Early views of Ceres (left) and Pluto (right).

NASA / JPL-CALTECH / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA (LEFT) NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI (RIGHT)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. William B. McKinnon is in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri 63130, USA,

    William B. McKinnon

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  1. William B. McKinnon
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Correspondence to William B. McKinnon.

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McKinnon, W. Exploring the dwarf planets. Nature Phys 11, 608–611 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3394

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