VIDEO
Pluto
Project: Ms. Anderson
Talha Rana, Brian Harner
Contents
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Size relative to Earth
Distance from Sun
Special surface features
Where did its name come from
Moons if any
Missions or satellites that involve planet
Atmosphere
Age/History of your planet
Color
Rate of rotation and revolution
Important dates
Size of Pluto
Astronomers know only a little about
Pluto’s size
 Pluto has an estimated diameter of about
1,400 miles, less than a fifth of Earth
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Distance from Sun
Pluto is about 39 times as far from the Sun
as Earth
 Its average distance from the Sun is about
3,647,240,000 billion miles
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Pluto’s Surface
Astronomers know very little about Pluto’s
surface
 They do know that Pluto’s surface is one
of the coldest places in our Solar System
 Astronomers believe the temperature on
Pluto may be about -375F (-225C)
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Pluto’s Name
The planet was named after the Roman
god of the dead.
 The name also honor Percival Lowell,
whose initials are the first two letters of
Pluto.
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Pluto’s Moons
Astronomers have found out that Pluto has
2 moons
 In 2005 Astronomers discovered 2
previously unknown moons of Pluto
 They named them Hydra and Nix
 They had diameters of up to 100 miles
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Missions to Pluto
In 2006, NASA launched the New
Horizons probe
 The probe was expected to fly by Pluto in
2015
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Atmosphere
Pluto appears to be partly covered with
frozen methane gas and to have a thin
atmosphere composed of methane
 Because Pluto’s density is low,
astronomers think Pluto is mainly icy
 But Scientists doubt Pluto has any form of
life
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Age/History of Pluto
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From Pluto’s discovery in 1930, people widely
considered Pluto to be the 9th planet of our Solar
System
Because of it’s small size and irregular orbit,
many astronomers questioned weather Pluto
should be grouped with worlds like Earth and
Jupiter
This debate led the international Astronomical
Union, to formally classify that Pluto is a dwarf
planet
Color
Pluto is mostly Brown
 Pluto appears to be partly covered with
frozen methane gas and to have a thin
atmosphere composed of methane
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Rate of rotation and revolution
Pluto travels around the sun in an elliptical
(oval-shaped) orbit.
 Pluto spins on its axes.
 It spins around once in about Earth days.
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Important dates
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In 1930, Tombaugh found Pluto’s image on 3
photographs.
Pluto entered Neptune’s orbit in Jan. 23, 1979, and
remained there until Feb. 11, 1999.
In 1978, astronomers at the U.S. Naval Observatory
substation on Flagstaff detected a satellite of Pluto. They
named it Charon.
In 1996, astronomers published the 1st detailed images
of Pluto’s surface.
In 2005, a team of astronomers discovered two
previously unknown moons of Pluto.
In 2006, NASA launched the New Horizons probe,
expected to fly by Pluto in 2015.
Percival Lowell
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Percival Lowell predicted the location of a
new planet and began searching for it from
his observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He
used a telescope to photograph the area
of the sky where he thought the planet
would be found. He died in 1916 without
finding it.
Clyde W. Tombaugh
In 1929, Clyde W. Tombaugh, an
assistant at the Lowell Observatory, used
predictions made by Lowell and other
astronomers and photographed the sky
with a more powerful, wide-angle
telescope. In 1930, Tombaugh found
Pluto's image on three photographs.
 His ashes are in route to Pluto in the probe
that was sent to Pluto.
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Work cited page
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Spinrad, Hyron. “Pluto.”
2004.worldbookonline.com