Facts About The Dwarf Planet Pluto - The Largest Dwarf Planet
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Pluto |
Facts About Pluto
Planet Profile
Name | Pluto |
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Known Satellite | 5 |
Distance from Sun (avg) | 5.9 billion km |
Radius | 1,188.3 km |
Volume | 7.057 × 109 km3 |
Mass | 1.309 × 1022 kg |
Surface area | 17.8 million km2 |
Gravity | 0.62 m/s2 |
Max Temperature | - 369 °F (- 223°C) |
Min Temperature | - 287 °F (- 233°C) |
Length of day | 6.4 Earth Days |
Length of year | 248 Earth years |
Astronomical symbol | ♇ |
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Quick Facts About Pluto
- After its demotion to a dwarf planet, its new name is "134340 Pluto".
- The distance between Pluto and the Sun varies in the range from 4.4 billion kilometres to 7.3 billion kilometres.
- Sunlight takes 5.5 hours to reach Pluto from the Sun and 4.6 hours from the Earth.
- The amount of the sunlight that reaches its surface is so little that even on its brightest day, the sky would be in the twilight.
- Initially astronomers calculated its mass roughly to be the mass of Earth.
- Since its discovery, it has not completed a single orbit. It will complete the first one in the year 2178.
- Planet X was the name that was given to Pluto when it was discovered.
- Till date, only one spacecraft visited Pluto. The New Horizon spacecraft launched in 2006 and reached Pluto on 2015.
- The spacecraft also carried some of the ashes of Pluto's discoverer in a capsule.
- The transmission speed of the New Horizon probe is 1 to 4 kilobits per second.
- Pluto - Micky Mouse's dog, was named after the dwarf planet.
- Pluto has a Heart-shaped area on its surface which is named as Tombaugh Regio in the honour of its discoverer.
- Pluto's gravity is approximately 1/12th of ours. If you weigh 100 kg (220 LB) on Earth, you would only weigh 8kg (17 LB) on Pluto.
- Astronomers estimated its core to be 70% of its diameter.
- The mantle of Pluto is made up of Frozen water.
Detailed Facts About Pluto
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A 23-year-old astronomer discovered Pluto in 1930
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Clyde W. Tombaugh |
An impressive feat considering Tombaugh hadn't initially sought out employment at the observatory. His place behind the telescope came shortly after sending observations of Jupiter and Mars by utilising a makeshift telescope. The telescope made from a reflector and the crankshaft of a 1910 Buick and parts from a cream separator. Impressed with his innovation, the observatory enlisted Tombaugh to operate a new photographic telescope to search for what was then called Planet X.
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The search for Pluto as Planet X was intially started in 1905
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Percival Lowell |
Lowell began his search in 1905 and went through three unsuccessful searches. His determination was rising when rival William H Pickering made allegations of an orbit and position of a hypothetical planet. Lowell's research was continued postmortem. His family was donating time and money to the effort until its discovery in 1930.
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An eleven-year-old girl named Pluto
When Madden was acquisitive over what the planet should be called, Benicia chimed him with Pluto after the Roman god of the underworld. Sticking with the current theme of the eight current planets, Madan composed a letter to a friend, an Oxford astronomer Herbert Hall Turner. Pluto was put up against other popular choices such as Kronos, Zeus, Atlas and Persephone. But in May of 1930, a vote among astronomers at Lowell Observatory saw Bernie's suggestion winning. Even her opinion beats out Minerva which was looking like the popular choice.
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Pluto lost its planetary designation in 2006
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Some major dwarf planet of the solar system compared to Earth © Wikimedia |
In August of 2006 International Astronomical Union or the IAU agreed that an object should meet the following criteria to be a "Planet":
1. The object must is in orbit around the sun.
2. It has sufficient mass for its own gravity to pull it into a nearly round shape.
3. It has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
Now, Pluto is in a orbit around the sun and is spherical. But since Pluto's neighbourhood has many other objects and it has not cleared its orbits. Thus it is not called a planet anymore.
At the same meeting, a new classification was formalised called a "Dwarf planet". A dwarf planet is one that meets the same first two criteria for a planet, but it has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. Plus a fourth criteria the dwarf planet is not a satellite of any other object. So, Eris along with Pluto and other similar bodies that met those four criteria were downgraded to dwarf planets.
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Pluto sometimes become the eighth planet of our solar system
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Orbits of the planets of the solar system including Pluto |
In 1999, Pluto slipped beyond Neptune to become the ninth. Despite this, however, there is no chance of them colliding. This is because Pluto's 248-year orbit around the Sun takes it 17 degrees above and below the plane in which Neptune and the other planets travel. Neptune and Pluto are in a so-called gravitational resonance where each planet speeds up or slows down as the other approaches. This resonance alters their paths and prevents them from coming closer than around 2.6 billion kilometres to each other.
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Pluto rotates in a retrograde motion
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Images of Pluto from different angles |
The rotation of the planet is also considerably slower than that of Earth's. One full rotation of Pluto takes approximately 6.39 days on earth. One speculated reason for this slower rotation is the possible lack of a magnetic field.
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The dwarf planet has five natural satellite
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Charon and small moons of Pluto |
It is believed that at one point in time, Pluto has collided with an another Kuiper Belt Object in space. The massive collision caused the material to disperse that later coalesced and created the five satellite moons. All of the Pluto's moons got its name from mythological figures associated with the underworld.
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Pluto's relationship with its largest moon Charon is unique
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Pluto's largest moon - Charon |
Pluto and Charon are considered as a part of a binary system, also known as a double planet system. Binary planet system means that any pair of planets that have almost similar mass and orbiting a common centre of gravity. The International Astronomical Union has stated that considering Charon a dwarf planet is not an impossibility in the future.
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Pluto has a weak and unstable atmosphere
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Pluto's blue skies image taken by New Horizons |
Pluto has a flimsy, gaseous atmosphere that is mainly composed of nitrogen gas along with methane and carbon monoxide. Due to its inclined and elliptical orbit, the atmosphere completely freezes out and fall like snow when Pluto moves away from the sun. When Pluto moves toward the sun, the frozen atmosphere sublimates directly to gas. Due to its lower gravity, the atmosphere rises to a higher altitude than our atmosphere.
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Pluto is a hundred times smaller than our earth
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Pluto compared to Earth and the Moon |
The volume of this little world is 6.39 x 109 km3. For comparison, it is 170 times smaller than the earth. In simple word, 170 Pluto could fit inside the Earth. Its density is less than 2 grams per cubic centimetre, which means that Pluto is probably made of just mostly rock and ice. There are also glaciers of solid nitrogen and water.
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