Twiskies, Let's Get to Know Pluto Better!

Hemloo, Twiskies! Now we're going to talk about Pluto. Are you curious about Pluto? Why does it not considered as our ninth planet anymore? or why it named 'Pluto'? Who named it? Well I'll tell you about that today!

Pluto by dotteshippo in istockphoto.com

The International Astronomical Union categorized Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006 due to the possibility of additional objects crossing its orbit. Pluto's width is only roughly 1,400 miles. Pluto is only roughly half as wide as the United States at that tiny size. Its sparse atmosphere, which is primarily made up of carbon monoxide, methane, and nitrogen, is located at 3.6 billion miles from the Sun. Pluto's average temperature is -387°F (-232°C), which is too cold for life to exist there.

Pluto's Name

Pluto was named by 11-year-old girl. Venetia Burney of Oxford, England, proposed to her grandfather in 1930 that the Roman deity of the underworld be the name given to the new discovery. The name was chosen after he sent it to the Lowell Observatory. During breakfast with her mother and grandfather, Venetia suggested the name Pluto, according to a January 2006 interview with NASA. Her grandfather, Falconer Madan, had declared on March 14, 1930, that astronomers had found the ninth planet.

Pluto's Orbit and Rotation

Unlike the other planets, Pluto has an eccentric and inclined orbit around the Sun. Pluto can travel as distant as 49.3 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun and as near as 30 AU during its 248-year, oval-shaped orbit. (The average distance of 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers between Earth and the Sun is one AU.) However, Pluto's average distance from the Sun is 39 AU, or 3.7 billion miles (5.9 billion kilometers). One day in Pluto is equal as 6 days in earth or or exactly one day on Pluto is 153 hours.

Pluto's Size and Distance

With a diameter of around 2,377 kilometers (1,477 miles), Pluto is smaller than Earth's moon and is now categorized as a dwarf planet. Pluto is only around one-sixth the size of Earth and only makes up 0.2% of its mass, to put this into context. It has a surface size of nearly 17.7 million square kilometers, which is comparable to the land area of Russia. Despite its diminutive size, Pluto has five known moons, the largest of which is Charon, which is almost half as big as Pluto. In 2006, the small dwarf planet was reclassified from a planet due in large part to its small size. Pluto is approximately 39 times farther away from the Sun than Earth is, with an average distance of roughly 3.7 billion miles (5.9 billion kilometers). From this distance, sunlight travels from the Sun to Pluto in 5.5 hours.

Pluto's Moon

Pluto is known has 5 moons; Charon; Nix; Hydra; Kerberos; and Styx. Early in the solar system's history, Pluto may have collided with another body of a comparable size to establish this moon system. Pluto hosts five known moons, each discovered at different times. Charon, the largest, was found in 1978 and measures 1,212 kilometers in diameter. It's so massive compared to Pluto that they form a binary system, with both bodies tidally locked as they orbit each other every 6.4 days. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered Nix and Hydra in 2005. Nix is roughly 42 kilometers across and orbits Pluto every 25 days, while Hydra is slightly larger at 55 kilometers and takes 38 days to complete an orbit. Kerberos, discovered in 2011, is a tiny moon only 12 kilometers wide, orbiting between Nix and Hydra every 32 days. Styx, the smallest at 11 kilometers across, was found in 2012 and is the closest to Pluto of the four smaller moons, with a 20-day orbit. Scientists believe the four smaller moons formed from debris ejected during the same cosmic collision that created Charon.