Some Interesting Facts About Ex-planet Pluto

The International Astronomical Union defines a planet as a celestial body that orbits around a star (like our sun) and is big enough that it forms into a shape of a sphere by its own gravity. But a planet cannot be big enough that it can cause thermonuclear fusion. It also has to have a clear orbit with no other bodies of comparable size influencing its gravitational force.

Since my formative school days, I grew up to know Pluto was a planet. However, the International Astronomical Union has recently declassified this farthest planet and removed it from the list of planets that orbit the sun.

WHY IT WAS DECLASSIFIED?

The International Astronomical Union declassified Pluto form the list of planets mainly because it was found out that some asteroids have been detected in the solar system about the size or even larger than Pluto. Secondly, Pluto was also discovered not have a regular orbit and it was because of these reasons that it failed to meet the recent rules and requirements set by Astronomers for qualification as a planet. Never-the-less, it is still considered the 10th largest body orbiting our solar system and it is code-named an ex-planet.

Size

Pluto was named by an eleven year old British girl soon after it was discovered in 1930 by Tombaugh. It was named after the Roman god of the underworld. In terms of size, Pluto is smaller than the earth and is reddish-brown in color, unlike the Blue Planet Earth and the Red Planet Mars. Its moon, Charon is more than a half the full size of Pluto itself; this makes it one of the only planets with a giant moon of it own. There are however, two other moons of Pluto that were discovered in 2005

Distance

Pluto is so far away from the sun that it follows a highly irregular orbit around the Sun that at some points, it is closer to the sun than Neptune. At the closest point of its orbit, called perihelion, Pluto gets to within 4.44 billion km from the Sun. And then at its most distant point of its orbit, called aphelion, Pluto gets to within 7.38 billion km of the Sun. When one is in Pluto, the sun looks so small like some little bright star given the enormous this distance that exist between it and the sun.

Atmosphere

Its atmosphere has some traces of methane, nitrogen and carbon-dioxide. the absence of oxygen on Pluto means it cannot sustain life