The Dwarf Planet

Pluto was once considered the ninth planet in our solar system but in 2006 it was declared a dwarf planet instead. Pluto is 39 AU (astronomical units) away from the sun with a year lasting 248.89 Earth years long. Pluto gets its name from the Roman god of the underworld and has five moons.

Pluto Facts

Pluto is smaller than Earth's moon and is about half the width of the United States
Pluto's orbit is oval and tilted meaning that at some points it is closer to the sun than Neptune
- Pluto's 248-year-long, oval-shaped orbit can take it as far as 49.3 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, and as close as 30 AU.
Pluto's orbit takes place in a region called the Kuiper Belt
A day on Pluto is about 153 hours which is six Earth days
Pluto's largest moon is Charon
- Charon is so big that Pluto and Charon actually orbit each other like a double planet
The only spacecraft to reach Pluto was NASA's New Horizons telescope in 2015
Pluto's surface is too cold to support life with temperatures ranging from -378 to -396 degrees F
Pluto has a very thin atmosphere made up of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide
- The atmosphere has a blue tint and a distinct haze
Pluto has a heart shaped glacier that is bigger than Texas
Pluto is so far away that if you were to stand on the surface of Pluto at noon, the sun would be 1/900 the brightness it is here on Earth, or about 300 times as bright as our full moon.
Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt which is a section of the solar system that is beyond the orbit of Neptune
- The Kuiper Belt is filled with millions of icy worlds which formed during the creation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago
Pluto's five moons are named: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx.
- The moon system was likely formed due to a collision between Pluto and a similiar sized object early in the history of the solar system