Pluto
The only thing everyone knows about Pluto is the fact that it was demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006. Once thought to be a dead and boring body, we now know that Pluto is actually a youthful dancer with interesting features! With an orbit more elliptical than usual and tilted by 11 degrees, Pluto is closer to the Sun than Neptune for 20 years!
Pluto Stats
Average Distance from Sun: 5906.38 million km
Perihelion: 4436.82 million km Aphelion: 7375.93 million km Mass: 0.0022 times Earth Diameter: 2374 km Volume: 0.0064 times Earth Temperature: -218 C to -240 C Rotation: -153.293 hours Revolution: 90 560 Earth days Moons: 5 Type: Dwarf planet Namesake: Pluto was the Greek/Roman god of the Underworld. His Greek form is Hades. |
Pluto Facts
- PLUTO AND CHARON ARE A BINARY DWARF PLANET SYSTEM. Charon is Pluto's largest moon, being 1212 km across. It's so large that instead of orbiting Pluto, the two dance around an imaginary point in space, called a barycentre. Because of that, they're called binary dwarf planets.
- PLUTO HAS A HUGE PALE HEART. The heart is made of nitrogen ice and is relatively young: only a few million years old, versus Pluto's age of over 4.5 billion years.
- PLUTO'S DIAMETER IS GREATER THAN ERIS. Ever since the New Horizons space probe flew by Pluto, the diameter of this dwarf planet has been confirmed to be 2374 km, more than Eris's diameter of 2326 km (not 2397 km or 2600 km), making Pluto the largest dwarf planet by diameter. However, Eris is still more massive than Pluto.
- PLUTO WAS DISCOVERED BY CLYDE TOMBAUGH in 1930, but Percival Lowell first believed that there was an object where Pluto is, he just never found it.
- PLUTO IS 1/3 WATER. Earth's ocean water is less than 1/3 of Pluto's total water. On the surface, Pluto has mountains of water ice that are up to 3 km high!
- PLUTO SOMETIMES HAS AN ATMOSPHERE of (mostly) nitrogen. When it's farther from the Sun, the nitrogen freezes and falls as snow.
- PLUTO WAS NAMED BY A CHILD. 11 year old Venetia Burney in Oxford, England suggested the name Pluto while the other astronomers were scratching their heads, trying to find a good name.