Pluto: Pink Dwarf Planet

Neil DeGrasse Tyson wrote The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet to examine why Pluto ought not to be considered a planetary body and instead a dwarf planet or Kuiper Belt Object.

Pluto by far was the least massive planet, with less than 5 percent of the mass of Mercury, the solar system’s next smallest planet. The orbit of Pluto is very flat from a perfect circle. In fact, Pluto spends 20 years of its 248 year orbit closer to Neptune than to the Sun. Pluto’s orbit is not only oblong, it tips more than 17 degrees from the plane of the solar system, a full of 10 degrees more than Mercury’s orbit.

The International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto was too small to be a planet and created a new category to put it in, dwarf planets. Dwarf Planets are classified as “A) a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, B) has sufficient mass for it self- gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that is assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, C) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and D) is not a satellite”. The criteria for both planets and dwarf planets are very similar, though planets must be able to clear the neighbourhood around its orbit. This basically means that a planet must be able to complete a rotation around the sun without interfering with another planets orbit. Pluto is very close to Neptune so they had a chance to collide into each other. If you look at a visual it is clear that there orbital rotation paths intersect with each other at two locations. This is another reason why Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

Today we are going to talk about Pluto and its features. Pluto is a dwarf planet, it is very cold and its orbit takes longer to revolve around the sun than other planets. Pluto is not considered a planet now but it was before a meteorite knocked it out of orbit a long time ago. Pluto is much further from the sun than the other planets. Because it is so far out it takes longer to orbit the sun.

This article relates to the upcoming lab because it talks about "ice volcanoes," and we will be talking about volcanoes during the next lab session. In general, volcanoes are an incredibly interesting thing to think about because they are mountains that erupt lava, hot vapor, rock fragments, etc. Ice volcanoes are an even more fascinating thing to think about because I was not aware that they even existed; the possibility that they might exist on Pluto is insane. Although the two mountains that have been seen on Pluto might not be ice volcanoes, it's still compelling to think that they might be, especially since they have "depressions similar to volcanoes found on Mars and Earth." This article does not affect me directly, but this discovery might help scientists get more of an understanding of what Pluto might look like in the future.

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh and was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. This means that for almost eighty years, all of mankind knew that Pluto was a planet. The real trouble for Pluto came in 1992 when David Jewitt and Jane Luu discovered the first celestial objects in a region now called the Kuiper Belt (Weintraub, 2015). Pluto is considered one of the largest celestial objects in the belt (Redd, 2012). However, there are some objects in

Pluto is unlike the other planets in that it has an icy surface instead of a rocky surface, like the inner 4 (terrestrial) planets, or a deep atmosphere, like the next 4 (gas giant) planets.

Pluto is very popular in the world and there is a lot of conversation on whether or not it should be considered a planet. Its size and unusual orbit are two factors that make it part of the dwarf family.

In the past the definition of a planet in space was a body that orbits a star, such as the sun, that reflects the star’s light and is larger than an asteroid. This is until new research by new technologies allowed us to learn more and change the definition of a planet. This new information changed the fact that Pluto is no longer a planet, but a dwarf. Dwarfs may confuse many people because it is hard to tell it apart from a planet.

Pluto is a small planet that is very distant from the sun and extremely different from Earth. It is only 2,372 kilometers (1,474 miles) in diameter, has a retrograde (backwards/east to west) orbit, and has about one fifteenth of the gravity of Earth. So, a person who weighs 100 pounds on Earth would only weigh roughly 7 on Pluto. On Pluto, one day is about 6.39 days on Earth. Meaning within

Pluto's distance from the Sun is 3.67 billion miles. Pluto follows a highly elliptical orbit around the Sun. At the closest point of its orbit, called

Pluto is not a planet because it does not meet the requirements to be one and it is different from the other planets. First, starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov “Pluto is usually farthest from the Sun. However, its orbit "crosses" inside of Neptune's orbit.” Unlike the other planets which orbit the sun in a circle, Pluto’s orbit around the sun is an oval shape. This makes it go into Neptune’s orbit for 20 years every 248 years. Although they will never collide it is way different than any other planet. This shows that it does not meet the third requirement because it does not have a cleared out region of the sun. Next, nineplanets.org says “It is much smaller than any of the official planets and now classified as a "dwarf planet". Due to its size it is

Astronomers now label Pluto as a “dwarf planet” because it does not meet all of the criteria to be a planet. It is also not alone in its orbit; it is part of a wide group of small-scale objects that have been detected revolving around the Sun beyond Neptune.

Not only are Pluto and the other eight planets similar, they are also different in multiple ways. After all, Wilson A. Bentley once said: “No two snowflakes are alike.” As most, if not all, people know, planets have an orbit. However, Pluto’s orbit is a little different and unusual compared to the orbit of the other eight planets. Although Pluto takes longer than the other planets to one orbit around the sun (248 earth years), the main difference is that Pluto’s orbit doesn’t lie in the same plane as the eight planets, but is inclined at an angle of 17 degrees. Not only that, but its orbit is more elliptical, or oval-shaped, than others. This causes Pluto to sometimes passes inside the orbit of Neptune. In paragraph 3, it mentioned that

In the outer limits of our solar system there is a planet unlike any other, Pluto. Pluto was discovered in February of 1930 by an American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh. It is the only planet to have been discovered by an American. All though we have known of the existence of Pluto for over thirty years now, there are still many mysteries surrounding this celestial body. Being the farthest planet has made it difficult to study Pluto, Adding to the obscurity of this strange planet is that the capability to send spacecraft such distances has never been achieved. Through the wonders of science and astronomy, there are many things that can be determined, concluded, and hypothesized about this obscure planet.