the.com/minor planet
a rock too proud to be an asteroid, too small to be a planet, so it got a numbered ID instead.
means a solar system body orbiting the sun that's neither a full planet nor a comet, spanning everything from house-sized rubble to dwarf planets like ceres.
from coined by astronomers in the 1800s once telescopes started finding too many small orbiting bodies to keep calling them planets, so they got demoted to a bureaucratic catch-all before anyone knew what pluto would become.
official countover 1.3 million minor planets numbered and catalogued
first oneceres, found 1801, later reclassified as dwarf planet
naming rightsdiscoverers can propose names, subject to iau approval
pluto ironypluto itself got demoted into this category in 2006