MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- The distant dwarf planet Eris is a virtual twin of Pluto, which was stripped of its planetary status when Eris was discovered in 2005, European astronomers say.
Eris passed in front of a faint background star in November 2010 in an event called an occultation, which allowed observatories on Earth to make calculations of the dwarf planet's size, a release from the Munich headquarters of the European Southern Observatory said Wednesday.