The Pluto - a dwarf planet

  The Pluto - a dwarf planet

Had you asked anyone before 2006, which is the smallest planet in the solar system? An immediate reply would have been The Pluto. But now it is mere at the status of a dwarf planet. Now we can say The Pluto - a dwarf planet. The size of the dwarf planet is way smaller than the moon, about 66% of the diameter of the moon.

Why and when Pluto lost the status of the planet?

The planet is anything which is revolving around The Sun. As per this logic, Pluto should also be a planet as it used to be, but this is not the case anymore. Eris a dwarf planet was discovered in 2005, in the scattered orbital disc. The discovery of Eris led the scientist to think about the status of Pluto as a Planet. In 2006, Scientists formally defined the term Planet. Till 2006, there used to be nine planets in our solar system, but now there remains eight only. Pluto has lost the status of a planet in 2006 and got the status of a dwarf planet. Pluto lost the status of the planet because it does not fulfil the criteria of clearing the neighbourhood around its orbit.

Now there are only eight planets Mercury, Venus Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

       Pluto is the last in the sequence of the planets from the distance of the Sun. Pluto has yet to complete one full circle of the Sun as its orbital period is about 248years. It is made of Rock and Ice and is also the coldest one. Its surface is composed of frozen Nitrogen, Carbon monoxide and Methane. Nitrogen is more than 98 per cent of all the frozen gases.

    Claude Tambauge discovered Pluto in 1930. It is in the Kepler Belt. It has five satellites. Name of the five satellites is Charon, Nix, Hydra, Styx, Kerberos. Charon is the largest of the five. Charon is also the closest to the Pluto.

    Some major technical characteristic of the Pluto is:

• The orbital period of The Pluto is 248 years.
• It is at an average Austraunomical distance of 39.5AU from the Sun.
• The designation of Pluto is 134340.
• Its average orbital speed is 2.73Km/s.
• The escape velocity is 1.21km/s.
• Min and Max Surface temperatures are 33K and 55K respectively.
• Surface gravity is 0.620 m/s2.
• Pluto's diameter is about 2379-2380 km.
• Its surface area is 0.035 times of the earth.
• Its mass is 0.00218 times of the earth.
• The volume is 0.00651 times of the earth.