Pluto

1. VIDEO Pluto Project: Ms. Anderson Talha Rana, Brian Harner

2. Contents • 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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)

6. 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.

7. 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

8. Missions to Pluto • In 2006, NASA launched the New Horizons probe • The probe was expected to fly by Pluto in 2015

9. 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

10. Age/History of Pluto • 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

11. Color • Pluto is mostly Brown • Pluto appears to be partly covered with frozen methane gas and to have a thin atmosphere composed of methane

12. 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.

13. Important dates • 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.

14. Percival Lowell • 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.

15. 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.

16. Work cited page • Spinrad, Hyron. “Pluto.” 2004.worldbookonline.com