Pluto and moon Charon

--------- #1364 - Pluto and Charon

- Attachment: Pluto atmosphere A1

- Pluto was announced as the 9^th planet to the world on March 17,1930. Pluto was named after the Roman god of the underworld as it was condemned to orbit so far from the Sun. It takes Pluto 248 years to orbit the Sun. It varies in its elliptical orbit from 30 AU to 50 AU ( AU = the Earth - Sun distance of 93 million miles ). Pluto’s orbit is also inclined by 17 degrees with the plane of the rest of the planets.

- Pluto is in orbital resonance with its neighbor Neptune. When Pluto makes 2 orbits around the Sun Neptune makes exactly 3 orbits. Pluto actually passes closer to Uranus than to Neptune in its strange orbit around the Sun.

- Pluto is small, only 1/50^th the mass of the Earth. It is only 2/3rds the width of the Moon.

- In 1978 Pluto’s moon Charon was discovered. Charon is ½ the width of Pluto. The two revolve around a common center of gravity completing one revolution in 6.4 days. They are synchronously locked in their orbits always facing each other.

- The Hubble Space Telescope has since discovered 2 other tiny moons orbiting Pluto, Nix and Hydra.

- Another discovery the same year, 2005, was a celestial body more distant than Pluto and bigger than Pluto. Another “planet” named Eris. Since then many other large bodies have been found in the Kuiper Belt of Comets making Pluto less and less unique.

- In 2006 a decision was made to ouster Pluto and Eris from the list of planets. Pluto and Charon were thrown in the same mix of distant, icy, minuscule bodies with wildly eccentric orbits and large inclinations to the plane of the Solar System. Now our Solar System only has 8 planets.

- In 2015 a spacecraft named New Horizons, that blasted off on January 19, 2006, will arrive to visit Pluto and Charon. Their new classification is “ Dwarf Planets” and part of the Kuiper Belt of celestial objects. New discoveries are certain. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned

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