The planet is perpetually dark. Another reason for its name is because PL are Percival Lowell’s initials, the man who theorized that another planet existed. The planet was discovered in 1930.

Pluto, when compared to the other eight planets in the solar system is smaller. It is even identified as the solar system’s smallest planet. It is considered as a dwarf planet in 2006. It usually orbits past the Neptune’s orbit.

Its composition is still unknown and its density has an indication that it contains a mixture of 30% water ice and 70% rock. Pluto’s atmosphere consists basically of nitrogen combined with methane and carbon monoxide.

The planet’s orbit is eccentric that brings it inside Neptune’s orbital path. Pluto has one satellite known as Charon, which has an estimated diameter of about 1200 km or 750 miles, resulting to the pair being closest in size compared to any other planet/moon combination.

As far as researches are concerned, Pluto has not yet been visited by any spacecraft and pictures taken from its surface are blurry. However, by the year 2015, a spacecraft known as New Horizons launched in 2006 by NASA will visit Pluto.

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Pluto

Pluto, like Earth and Mars also have polar ice caps. The polar ice caps are said to have been formed because of the coldness of the dwarf planets temperature which ranges from -235 and -210 C. Up until now, Pluto remains as the only planet in the solar system not to be explored. But through different forms for science and technology, Pluto is known to have gases such as nitrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. The discovery of these gases was during 1985 when astronomers found the planet orbiting. Pluto was passing by a star and has appeared to slightly dim, hence concluding that Pluto has an atmosphere. When Pluto moves away from the sun, the temperature drops and the liquids on the planet form into ice and as it gets warmer again, the liquid evaporates and creates gases.

Because of Pluto’s relatively small size, even smaller than the Earth’s moon and appears like a star to the naked eye, some astronomers believe that Pluto had been one of Neptune’s moon which in some way through time has escaped from Neptune’s orbit. Pluto, though small, has three orbiting moons. Charon which is almost half of Pluto’s size and Nix and Hydra which are named after the Greek goddess daughter of chaos, Nyx and a nine-headed serpent guardian to the underworld.

Imagining Pluto

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In any case, it was Clyde Tombaugh who discovered Pluto. However, even before his discovery, many astrologers and experts already guessed that there was another planet beyond Neptune. During the 19th century, observations made on Neptune produced the finding beside the 8th planet of the Solar System, there is something else disturbing the orbit of Uranus—something beside Neptune. It was during the early 1900s that the Lowell Observatory in the state of Arizona in America started a project to discover “Planet X,” the possible ninth planet.

Tombaugh handled the job of searching for the ninth planet. Using 13-inch astrograph and, later on, a blink comparator of the observatory, he was able to notice a moving object during the search. Further inquiry revealed that it was not an asteroid, hence placing it into the planet classification. The planet was named Pluto after the suggestion of Venetia Burney. The name fits the planet perfectly, as it is from the name of the god of the underworld from Roman mythology.

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The dwarf planet was discovered in 1930. At first, scientists thought that Pluto did not have a satellite in its orbit. This would go on about 50 years until an American astronomer named James Christy discovered Pluto’s largest moon on June 22, 1978. Decades after the first Pluto satellite was discovered, two more moons were seen by the Hubble Space telescope on June 2005.

Charon – also known as Pluto I, Charon is a little more than half the size of Pluto measuring 1.2 km across. It is the first, and the largest, of the three moons of Pluto to be discovered. It was discovered when James Christy was examining images of Pluto taken on photographic plates. Christy noticed an irregular bulge that recurs periodically on the image of Pluto.

Since the bulge periodically appears on the surface image of the planet, scientists realized that it could be a celestial body orbiting around Pluto. The name came from the boatman in the river Styx that guides the spirit of the dead to the underworld.

Hydra and Nix – Previously known as S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2, respectively. It was discovered thanks to the images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Two astronomers made independently discoveries on the remaining moons of Pluto – Max J. Mutchler on June 15, 2005 and Andrew J. Steffl one month after. It was later announced on October 31, 2005.

There haven’t been any direct measurements taken but scientists estimate that Hydra is about 61 km across while Nix measures 46 km across. When it was discovered, Hydra was shown to be brighter than its twin, which suggested that it is the bigger of the two by about 10 percent.

Hydra was taken from the 9-headed serpent that Hercules slew while Nix is the Greek goddess of darkness and night and the mother of Charon.

Moons of Pluto

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At that time planet Neptune and Uranus had long been discovered but astronomers at the observatory are so certain that there are still planets that are left undiscovered in the solar system. Because of this, Vesto Melvin Slipher, director of the observatory assigned Tombaugh to do the job of discovering the next planet, which they referred to as planet X.

For the assignment, Tombaugh utilized a tool named blink comparator for the purpose of making comparisons of two photographs in the night sky. His work was done methodically. He compared two photographic plates searching for any signs of the presence of the planet. Finally on 1930, Tombaugh’s efforts were compensated. He was able to finally discover planet Pluto, which was seen as a faint object at the right part of our orbit. The name for the planet was actually chosen by Venetia Burney, a British school girl at an age of 11. The name also matches the initials of the person that the observatory was named, Percival Lowell.

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Pluto’s atmosphere

The ices on the surface of Pluto derive nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide gasses. This make up the very thin envelope that is Pluto’s atmosphere. The pressure of the surface of Pluto ranges from 6.5-24 ubar. It has been speculated that because of Pluto's elongated orbit that it has an effect on its atmosphere. The atmosphere slowly freezes out and falls to the ground when Pluto moves away from the Sun. The temperature of the solid surface of Pluto increases when Pluto is nearer the Sun. The Ices sublimate into gas because of this. An anti-greenhouse effect occurs where the surface of Pluto is cooled because of this sublimation. By using the Submillimeter Array, scientists discovered that the temperature in Pluto is around 43 K (−230 °C).

On 2006 it was discovered that there was ethane on Pluto’s surface. The ethane was created by the photolysis of frozen methane. The gas is then emitted into the atmosphere.

Because methane exists temperature inversion is common in Pluto’s atmosphere. The atmosphere is 36K warmer than 10km below.

Pluto Discovered

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Pluto

Planetary scientists were able to calculate that Pluto’s density is somewhere between 1.8 and 2.1g/cm3. Through this information, one would be able to calculate that the former planet’s interior must be made up of 50-70% rock and 30%-50% ice. There are also decaying radioactive elements within it that would heat the dwarf planet’s interiors thus allowing both rock and ice to continuously move around.

From what scientists know, the dwarf planet’s interior is perhaps a rocky core that is then surrounded by a shell of ice. If the aforementioned radioactive elements are still in a continuous state of decay at the moment then this could potentially heat Pluto just enough to make its interior seem like a liquid ocean that is comparable to Jupiter’s Europa.

Pluto’s surface is made up of a thin layer of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane. When Pluto draws a little closer to the sun, these materials evaporate and subsequently form an atmosphere that surrounds the dwarf planet. The very opposite occurs when it becomes cooler and moves further away from the heat of the sun. All these elements freezes up and then falls back down to its surface.

The Dwarf Planet – Pluto

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Pluto is the most distant object in the Solar System from the Sun, reaching a maximum distance of 4.583 billion miles and a minimum distance of 2.757 billion miles. This range is due to its elliptical orbit, which causes its distance from the sun to vary. It is also 40 times more distant from the Sun than the Earth.

Pluto’s distance from the Sun results in a broad range of temperatures on the surface, although it still remains incredibly cold by Earth standards. In fact, the surface temperature of Pluto is so cold that scientists use the Kelvin scale to measure it. The zero point of the Kelvin scale has been set at approximately -273° Celsius, a theoretical maximum point from which no additional energy can be extracted from a system.

Using Kelvin, the mean surface temperature on Pluto is 44° K (approximately -229° C) with a maximum of 55° K (-218° C) and a minimum of 33° K (-240° C). However, Pluto’s atmosphere is actually warmer than the surface of the dwarf planet due to the presence of unexpectedly large amounts of methane. The average temperature in the atmosphere is around -180° C, making it over 40° C hotter than the surface.

However, the most abundant gas in Pluto’s atmosphere remains nitrogen, followed by methane and carbon dioxide. Its thin atmosphere is the reason why Pluto’s surface is so cold; as the dwarf planet moves farther from the sun, the atmosphere freezes and falls to the ground, but when it moves closer to the Sun, the frozen gases sublimate back into gaseous form, creating an anti-greenhouse effect that cools the surface of Pluto.

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Pluto’s

Despite its seeming regularity, this pattern actually suggests that in the long term, Pluto’s orbit is completely chaotic. There are computer simulations available that are often used to predict Pluto’s position for the next several million years, however, it is still quite impossible to really predict for sure where Pluto will end up because its position can become overly sensitive to various small details of the current state of our Solar System. Despite the fact that Pluto’s orbit often crosses with that of Neptune’s, their orbits are aligned in a way that they never collide nor get too close with each other.

There are various reasons for this and the simplest one would be the fact that their orbits simply do not intersect each other. Whenever Pluto is closest to the Sun, it also becomes the farthest above the ecliptic. This basically means that Pluto’s orbit passes at around 8 AU above that of Neptune therefore avoiding a major collision.

Change of Status – Pluto

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The gravity on Pluto is 7% than the gravity of Earth. An object weighting 200 pounds on Earth, would weight 14 pounds on Pluto. Before arriving at this conclusion, many astronomers and scientists made different assumptions on the true mass of Pluto. The first calculation for Pluto’s mass was made on its presumed effect on the Planets Neptune and Uranus.

It was even calculated to be the same mass as Earth. In 1976 the albedo of Pluto was calculated by Dale Cruikshank, David Morrison, and Carl Pilcher of the University of Hawaii. The results show that it was similar to that of Methane Ice. Pluto had to be more luminous for its size if this was the case. It was inferred that Pluto could not possibly have more than 1% of the earth’s mass.

When Charon, Pluto’s satellite, was discovered in 1979 scientists were able to determine the mass of the Pluto-Charon System. They applied Newton’s formula of Kepler’s Third Law. By measuring the gravitational effects of Charon, they were able to determine the diameter of Pluto.

Pluto is smaller and less massive than other planets and moons in the solar system. Pluto has just been recently classified as a dwarf planet. It is even smaller than another dwarf planet called Eris. It is twice the size of another dwarf planet named Ceres. Other moons contain more mass than Pluto. Castillo, lo, Europa, Ganymede, Titan, Triton and the Earth’s moon are all more massive than Pluto.

Discovery of Pluto

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