Pluto The Pup

The debate over Pluto’s planetary state still rages on… **T-Shirts now for sale!** Help support making more videos: goo.gl The blog is undergoing a redesign. Check out the progress so far at: cgpgrey.squarespace.com and let me know what you think of it. If you prefer threaded discussion, the reddit post is over here: www.reddit.com If you would like to help me make more videos please join the discussion on: Google+: plus.google.com Twitter: twitter.com Facebook: www.facebook.com

For the SPACE ENTHUSIAST, a 4 minute-long video comprised of actual NASA animation and CNN footage of the New Horizons spacecraft that’s currently headed for Pluto. New Horizons will reach Pluto in July of 2015. ( www.rich-parno.com )

What is a Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) Plutoid?… Any object orbiting the sun beyond Neptune are called ‘Trans-Neptunian Objects’. When it’s a Dwarf Planet orbiting beyond Neptune, it’s then called a ‘Plutoid’. I will be making a video about this in the future. I didn’t find alot of interesting facts about Dysnomia, however here is a few links to websites with facts about Eris’s moon, Dysnomia: www.absoluteastronomy.com en.wikipedia.org If you know anything interesting about these dwarf planets, feel free to share them in the comments! 🙂 Please rate, comment and subby!! xx

Astronomers have accurately measured the diameter of the faraway dwarf planet Eris for the first time by catching it as it passed in front of a faint star. This event was seen at the end of 2010 by telescopes in Chile, including the Belgian TRAPPIST telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. The observations show that Eris is an almost perfect twin of Pluto in size. Eris appears to have a very reflective surface, suggesting that it is uniformly covered in a thin layer of ice, probably a frozen atmosphere. The results will be published in the 27 October 2011 issue of the journal Nature. In November 2010, the distant dwarf planet Eris passed in front of a faint background star, an event called an occultation. These occurrences are very rare and difficult to observe as the dwarf planet is very distant and small. The next such event involving Eris will not happen until 2013. Occultations provide the most accurate, and often the only, way to measure the shape and size of a distant Solar System body. credit: ESO; music: John Dyson (from the album Moonwind) and movetwo. source: www.eso.org

Pluto, Pronunciation /?plu?to?/ , formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the tenth-largest body observed directly orbiting the Sun. Classified as a planet from its 1930 discovery, in 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) declared it a dwarf planet instead; Pluto is composed primarily of rock and ice and is relatively small: approximately a fifth the mass of the Earth’s Moon and a third its volume. It has an eccentric and highly inclined orbit that takes it from 30 to 49 AU (4.47.4 billion km) from the Sun. This causes Pluto to periodically come closer to the Sun than Neptune. Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, are sometimes treated together as a binary system because the barycentre of their orbits does not lie within either body. The IAU has yet to formalise a definition for binary dwarf planets, and until it passes such a ruling, they classify Charon as a moon of Pluto. Pluto has two known smaller moons, Nix and Hydra, discovered in 2005. From its discovery in 1930 until 2006, Pluto was considered the Solar System’s ninth planet. In the late 1970s, following the discovery of minor planet 2060 Chiron in the outer Solar System and the recognition of Pluto’s very low mass, its status as a major planet began to be questioned. Later, in the early 21st century, many objects similar to Pluto were discovered in the outer Solar System, notably the scattered disc object Eris, which is 27% more massive than Pluto. On August 24, 2006, the IAU defined the term “planet” for …

Visit science.nasa.gov for more. Dwarf planet Pluto is a world of mystery waiting to be visited for the first time. NASA’s New Horizons probe is racing across the solar system for a ground breaking close encounter that could dramatically alter what researchers “know” about Pluto and other small worlds.