Universe & Astronomy: Pluto

PLUTO FACTS

Pluto in 2015 by the New Horizons spacecraft, the first of its kind to visit Pluto and its moons

• Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt
• A dwarf planet is a celestial body that orbits the Sun directly and is massive enough for its own gravity to shape it into a rounded or ellipsoidal form (i.e. gravitationally rounded).
• Unlike these classical planets, Pluto resides in the Kuiper Belt, a region filled with many other icy bodies. Because it hasn’t cleared its neighborhood of similar-sized objects, it does not qualify as a full-fledged planet.

• Pluto is composed primarily of ice and rock, with a surface covered in frozen nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. Its interior is believed to have a rocky core surrounded by layers of water ice.
• Pluto has five moons.
• Charon (the largest)
• named after the ferryman of the dead in Greek mythology who transports souls accros the river Styx
• often considered a binary system (with Pluto)
• Styx
• named after the mythological river that separates the world of the living form the underworld
• Nix
• named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night and mother of Charon
• Kerberos
• named after Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to the underworld
• Hydra
• named after the nine-headed serpent from Greek Mythology, which was also associated with the underworld
• The name Pluto comes from the Roman god of the underworld, who is the equivalent of Hades in Greek mythology. In some interpretations, "Pluto" was used as a byname for Hades, emphasizing his role as the ruler of the dead and the giver of wealth (due to precious minerals found underground).
• The god Pluto was one of the six surviving children of Saturn alongside his brothers Jupiter and Neptune and sisters Ceres, Juno and Vesta.
• both god and planet live in dark regions, and are able to make them invisible (the planet was long searched after its existence was known)
• Pluto was the first known object in the Kuiper Belt and was discovered in 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh.