Monday 2 March 2009

Pluto

As you know Pluto is the smallest and furthest Planet in our Solar-System. Now Pluto isn't called a planet anymore, but a 'Dwarf-Planet'. Pluto is the only Planet that has not been visited by a Spacecraft from Earth. Pluto is a Double Planet. A Double Planet is a Planet that has only one Moon. The Planet and the Moon are orbiting each other. The Moon always faces Pluto on the same side. Pluto always faces its Moon with same side. Moon’s and Pluto’s size are very similar. The Moon is nearly as big as the Planet. To be a Double Planet, the Planet has to be/need to be/need to have: The Planet is only allowed to have one Moon. The size Moon has to be nearly the size of the Planet. They has to face the same face every time. To do that: the Planet has to spin once in the same time as its Moon orbits the Planet once.

Here you can see that Pluto is not much bigger that its Moon.
Some people say that Pluto isn’t a Planet. Pluto is just a Moon from Neptune that got out of its gravitational pull. Other people think Pluto and it Moon is part of the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is named after the Astronomer called Gerard Kuiper Those people call them “Super-Comets” or “Ice Dwarfs”. On Pluto there’s only a little of Sun’s heat, there. So, that means that Pluto is mostly made of Ice. Pluto was found in the same way as Neptune was found. The movement of Uranus. This time not Uranus’s movement, Neptune’s movement. Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh. Clyde looked at millions of photographs. Until he found one looking more like a Planet. I don’t think I need to tell you again that, Pluto is not always the furthest from the Sun.

Facts:
Symbol:



Colour: Grey
Diameter: 2,301 km (1,430 miles, 0.18 x Earth’s)
Mass: .013x10^24 kilograms (0.002 x Earth's)
Density: 1,750 kg/m^3
Minimum distance from the Sun: 4.34 billion km (2.7 billion miles)
Maximum distance from the Sun: 7.4 billion km (4.6 billion miles)
Minimum distance from Earth: 4.34 billion km (2.7 billion miles)
Roman and Greek Names: Pluto and Hades
Surface:



Time taken to spin once: 6 days 9hrs (6.4 days)
Temperature: -218°C (360°F)- -229°C (-380°F)
Time taken to go around the Sun once: 248 Years
Moon(s): 1 named, 0 coded & all together 1 Moon. - Charon.

1 comment:

elis' journal said...

You will be a great astronomer.