Pluto is a complex and mysterious world with mountains, valleys, plains, craters, and glaciers. It is located in the distant Kuiper Belt. Discovered in 1930, Pluto was long considered our solar system's ninth planet.
But after the discovery of similar worlds deeper in the Kuiper Belt, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union. According to the. Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune.
It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock.
Pluto, along with it's largest moon Charon, are considered a double dwarf planetary system, and is sometimes referred to as the Pluto-Charon system. Charon is 51% the size of Pluto. Pluto's surface consists of 98% nitrogen ice with ice mountains, ice volcanoes, and has a thin atmosphere consisting of nitrogen and trace gases.
Pluto, large, distant member of the solar system that formerly was regarded as the outermost and smallest planet. In 2006 a group of experts in the scientific community voted to give Pluto the new classification of dwarf planet. about Pluto in this article.
Pluto was once considered the ninth planet in the solar system, it was demoted in 2006 to dwarf planet status. We explore this icy body in more detail here. Pluto features a heart-shaped area on its surface known as Tombaugh Regio.
The dwarf planet has five known moons, with Charon being the largest at half Pluto's diameter. Pluto's orbit is eccentric, ranging from 30 to 49 astronomical units from the Sun, and it completes one orbit every 248 Earth years. Pluto is one of the most mysterious and controversial celestial objects in the solar system.
Find out what most mystifies scientists and stargazers about this dwarf planet. Discovered in 1930, Pluto is the second closest dwarf planet to the Sun and was at one point classified as the ninth planet. Pluto is.
Get Pluto facts. Learn about the dwarf planet, which was once considered the ninth planet of the solar system. Pluto is the largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, discovered in 1930.
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