Is Pluto A Planet? Here’s What Neil deGrasse Tyson Believes

Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is still the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, first noticed something was different about Pluto back in the 1990s. During a 2009 interview with NPR, Tyson stated that other celestial bodies of ice discovered in the outer solar system acted similarly to Pluto because they crossed orbits with other planets.

According to Tyson, that’s simply not how a large celestial body considered a “planet” should behave. The astrophysicist went on to say that Pluto’s demotion as a “planet” shouldn’t be looked at negatively. Instead, Pluto should be considered the first object discovered in an area of the outer solar system known as the Kuiper belt. 

That didn’t stop Tyson from poking fun at Pluto’s diminutive size when he appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in 2017. During the brief interview, he said the Earth’s moon has five times the mass of Pluto, and yet it’s a “moon,” not a planet. In fact, Pluto is only about two-thirds the moon’s diameter with a circumference of 4,627 miles, according to Space.com. 

So, according to Tyson, Pluto is still not a planet and should “stay in its lane,” sticking to his perspective despite continued controversy over the matter in the wider scientific community.