Welcome to our new post! In this article, I will present to you some interesting facts about the planet Pluto. Get ready to learn amazing things about the ninth planet in our solar system and amaze your friends with these interesting facts.
Pluto has a glacier the size of Oklahoma and Texas, and an interesting feature is that this glacier is heart-shaped.
The name Pluto also follows mythological tradition and pays tribute to the Roman god of the underworld, Pluto. An interesting fact about the name of this planet is that it was named by an 11-year-old girl. The girl's name was Venetia Burney, and she suggested the name to her grandfather, who submitted it to the Lowell Observatory, which ultimately decided to use the name.
This planet has, up to now, 5 discovered moons (Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx). The largest of them is Charon, which is half the size of Pluto, earning it the title of the largest moon relative to the planet it orbits. An interesting fact about Charon is that it always faces the same surface of Pluto, meaning the other half of Pluto has never seen Charon. One orbit of Charon around Pluto takes the same amount of time as one rotation of the planet, 153 hours. It takes a staggering 248 Earth years to complete one orbit around the Sun!
The planet's surface is complex, featuring valleys, mountains, craters, plains, and glaciers.
Many people will remember Pluto as the ninth planet in our solar system from their school science classes. However, after the discovery of the Kuiper Belt (an area beyond Neptune) in 2006, the planet was reclassified as a dwarf planet. Pluto is part of the group of objects (icy and rocky, much smaller than the other planets) and dwarf planets that orbit in a disc-like fashion within the Kuiper Belt.
It has a width of 2253 kilometers, which is only about half the size of the United States and 1/6 the size of Earth. It is considered the smallest planet in our solar system. However, when we consider ice dwarfs, Pluto is the largest among them.
This planet is located 39 astronomical units from the Sun. Did you know that at this distance, it takes approximately 5.5 hours for sunlight to travel from the Sun to Pluto? Due to this distance, the sunlight on Pluto is only 1/900th as bright as on Earth.
This planet also exhibits a retrograde rotation, just like Uranus and Venus, meaning its rotation direction is from east to west.
Pluto's atmosphere is thin and consists of gasses like nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane. The planet's temperature is approximately -232 degrees Celsius, which prevents the existence of liquid water.
Only one mission has been able to visit this dwarf planet. However, based on what we have observed about the planet, it lacks the necessary conditions to support life.
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