Pluto is a dwarf planet that is located in the Kuiper belt. It was the first object to be
found in the Kuiper belt. If you were to look into the night sky and find the constellation of
Sagittarius, Pluto is located in about the center of it. Originally considered a planet when it was
found by Clyde Tombaugh and named by Venetia Burney. Pluto is named after the Roman god
of the Underworld. It is named that because the surface temperature is thought to be 400 degrees
below zero. Our atmosphere would turn to kind of a misty snow if it was that cold.
In 2005 a new larger planet, Eris, was discovered in the Kuiper Belt. Pluto was then classified
as a dwarf planet. Pluto is about one half the size of the United States.
Scientists believe that Pluto has no
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It may
also get more nitrogen from inside of the planet that comes to the surface. Pluto’s
atmosphere is mostly made up of nitrogen. The methane ice surface reflects the light so that
different colors are seen. Pluto has a region that is shaped like a heart
and they call it sputnik planum. Pluto is 3,670,050,000 miles from the Sun. That makes it
about 40 times further from the sun than the earth is. Pluto has an elliptical orbit that looks like
an egg. It takes Pluto 248 earth years to rotate around the Sun. So you would never reach the
year one on Pluto. Because of the oval orbit of Pluto it actually gets closer to the Sun than
Neptune.
At one point Nasa thought there was an unseen planet in the area of Pluto because there
were discrepancies in the movements of Neptune and Uranus. They called it planet X. They
felt that Pluto is too small to affect these larger planets so they thought these movements were
caused by Planit X. However they have never found it and now believe it doesn’t exist at all.
The gravity on Pluto is .066 to that on earth. That means a person who weighs 100 pounds