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Question
What other celestial objects (besides the sun) have a strong enough gravitational pull to distort the orbital paths of some planets such as Pluto?
Everything in the universe exerts some gravitational force on everything else, but it is only relatively massive and nearby objects that can truly distort an orbit. Jupiter is the dominant perturbing influence on all the planets, asteroids and comets in the solar system. The other three giant planets are important enough that Neptune was actually discovered from its perturbations on the orbit of Uranus. Modern models of solar system orbits routinely include the gravitational pull of all eight large planets and the largest asteroids, such as Ceres. David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist
January 24, 2006
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