Wiktionary
n. A planetary object
Wikipedia
A planetary body or planetary object is any secondary body in the Solar System that is geologically differentiated or in hydrostatic equilibrium and thus has a planet-like geology: a planet, dwarf planet, or the larger moons and asteroids.
In 2002, planetary scientists Alan Stern and Harold Levison proposed the following algorithm to determine whether an object in space satisfies the definition for a planetary body. The body must:
- Be low enough in mass that at no time (past or present) can it generate energy in its interior due to any self-sustaining nuclear fusion chain reaction.
- Be large enough that its shape becomes determined primarily by gravity rather than mechanical strength or other factors (such as surface tension or rotation rate) in less than a Hubble time, so that the body would on this timescale or shorter reach a state of hydrostatic equilibrium in its interior.
This definition excludes brown dwarfs and stars, as well as small bodies such as planetesimals.
Usage examples of "planetary body".
The reigning Kronian model of what had taken place traced back to heretical challenges to orthodox astronomy that had first been proposed in the mid-twentieth century and held that after its violent birth, Venus had careened about the Solar System as a loose cannon, disturbing the orbits of both Earth and Mars and eventually circularizing its own orbit to become the planetary body familiar in modern times.
It was a planetary body moving rather slowly, as though its kinetic energies had been spent by encounters with other systems.
Then a distant planetary body moves through my field of view at the same rate.
The Kratch never went into atmosphere or too close a massive planetary body or into a crowd of Bands, Rondl remembered now.
It was the first extrasolar planetary body--that is, the first planet outside the Solar System--that we have been able to study in detail, and the Observatory was totally immersed in it.
Freed from all hypothetical by-thought, Roemer's observation tells us, first, that the time taken by a flash of light travelling from a cosmic light-source to reach the earth varies to a measurable extent, and, secondly, that this difference is bound up with the yearly changes of the earth's position in relation to the sun and the relevant planetary body.
The Venture appeared to have gone on orbital drive automat-ically as soon as the unexplained tumult which had brought her to this section of space subsided, the rea-son was that she had found herself then within orbiting range of a planetary body.
It may vary1 think it will varyfrom planetary body to planetary body.