Some interesting facts about the planet Pluto

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1. Pluto is named after the Greek god of the underworld.

It is a later name for the more famous Heads and was proposed by Venetia Burney, an eleven-year-old student from Oxford, England.

2. Pluto was reclassified from a planet in 2006 as a dwarf planet.

This is when Io formally defined the definition of a planet as "a planet is a celestial body that (a) orbits around the sun, (b) for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces. Holds enough mass so that it forms a hydrostatic equilibrium (almost round) shape, and (c) has cleared the area around its orbit. "

3. Pluto was discovered by the Lowell Observatory on February 18, 1930.

For 76 years between the discovery of Pluto and was reclassified as a dwarf planet, it was completed under one-third of its orbit around the Sun.

4. Pluto has five known moons.

Chand Charon (discovered in 1978), Hydra and Nix (both discovered in 2005), Kerberos originally P4 (discovered in 2011) and Stylus originally P5 (discovered in 2012) Official designation S / 2011 (134340) 1 and S / 2012 (are) 134340) 1.

5. Pluto is the largest dwarf planet.

At one point it was thought that it could be Eris. Currently, the most accurate measurement gives Eris an average diameter of 2,326 km with an error of 12 km, while Pluto has a diameter of 2,372 km with a margin of 2 km.

6. Pluto is one-third of the water.

It is in the form of water ice which is 3 times more water than all the oceans of the earth, the remaining two-thirds are rocks. The surface of Pluto is covered with snow and has numerous mountain ranges, light and dark areas, and scattering of craters.

7. Pluto is smaller than many moons.

These are Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, Io, Europa, Triton, and Earth moons. Pluto has 66% of the Earth's moon diameter and 18% of its mass. While it has now been confirmed that Pluto was the largest dwarf planet for nearly 10 years, it was thought that it was Eris.

8. Pluto has an eccentric and inclined orbit.

It is between 4.4 to 7.3 billion km of the Sun which means that Pluto is periodically closer to the Sun than Neptune.

9. Pluto is visited by a spacecraft.

The New Horizons spacecraft, which was launched in 2006, took off from Pluto on 14 July 2015 and took a series of images and other measurements. New Horizons is now on its way to the Kuiper Belt to locate even more distant objects.
10. Pluto's location was predicted by Percival Lovell in 1915.
That prediction came from deviations that he had initially observed in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune in 1905.

11. Pluto sometimes has an atmosphere.

When Pluto's elliptical orbit moves it closer to the Sun, its surface melts the ice and creates a thin atmosphere of predominantly nitrogen that slowly escapes the planet. It also has a methane mist which is about 161 kilometers above the surface. Methane is separated by sunlight into hydrocarbons that fall to the surface and cover the ice with a darker mantle. When Pluto travels away from the Sun to the atmosphere, it returns to its solid-state.