Pluto The Pup

Don’t forget to head over to stonedgazers.blogspot.co.uk Artist’s impression of how the surface of Pluto might look, according to one of the two models that a team of astronomers has developed to account for the observed properties of Pluto’s atmosphere, as studied with CRIRES. The video shows patches of pure methane on the surface. At the distance of Pluto, the Sun appears about 1000 times fainter than on Earth. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

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 …

Pluto was kicked off the list of major planets. It seems to have responded by turning a mysterious red color, according to scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope. They’re now trying to find out what makes its surface so dynamic. From the Space Telescope Science Institute.