Pluto is not just the name of the beloved Disney dog character. It is also the name of the once ninth planet of our solar system. Thanks to the recent reclassification of a planet, Pluto is now a significant dwarf planet instead. It lies on the edge of our solar system and is believed to be made primarily of rock with a thick icy surface. The Sun’s light takes a little over five hours to reach Pluto because it is on the outer edges of our solar system. In comparison, it takes only about eight minutes on Earth.

Pluto’s orbit around the Sun lasts approximately two hundred forty-eight years, with as much as twenty years of it spent within the orbit of Neptune. This is because Pluto orbits on an oblong-shaped incline rather than a more symmetrical elliptical plane like that of the eight planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The temperatures on Pluto can reach go down as much as almost a minus four hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Brrr! The temperatures are so icy that the oxygen and nitrogen in its thin atmosphere freezes. Size-wise, Pluto is not as quite as big as the Earth’s moon, maybe perhaps two-thirds its size. And until the last few years, it was considered the largest discovered object within the Kuiper belt.

The eight planets from Mercury to Neptune all exist within the same plane as the Kuiper belt. This Kuiper region is theoretically comprised of all the leftovers from the formation of our solar system. From this field of icy debris and rocks come a number of comets. Going further, scientists have said there is a round area of ice, rocks and cosmic dust called the Oort Cloud. This is the “no-man’s land” of the solar system where comets with orbits longer than two hundred years sort of hibernate and where solar winds exist.

When it comes to natural satellites, Pluto has three – Charon, Nix and Hydra. James Christy discovered Charon in 1978. Nix and Hydra were discovered in 2005. Charon is noteworthy because paired with Pluto, they are sometimes known as a binary planet. This refers to the fact that they are locked tidally with each other, meaning that the same side of Charon faces the same side as Pluto when they orbit each other. And even though that Charon is about half the size of the dwarf planet Pluto, the common gravitational force that is guiding their orbits is not located on either celestial body!

Pluto’s two other moons Nix and Hydra were discovered thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope. They orbit about two to three times Charon’s distance from Pluto. Nix and Hydra also orbit within the same plane as Charon. Because of the recent discovery of these two moons, scientists have not determined whether their orbits also are tidally locked.

While there is not a lot known about these two new moons of Pluto, scientists have determined that Hydra appears brighter than its companion Nix. This observation fuels speculation that Hydra may be the bigger of the two moons. They figure this out by the albedos, which are basically the reflectivity of light off the moon. The brighter Hydra appears means that its dimensions are bigger or its surface area reflects light in different ways. In comparison with Charon’s albedo, Hydra seems to be similar up to about thirty-five to forty percent. This data then segues into its approximate size estimate.

A lot of guesswork has gone into some of the aspects about Pluto’s newest moons. Some scientists even believe that the dwarf planet Pluto may even possess rings. However, images transmitted from the Hubble Space Telescope do not reflect that theory. The scientists who persist with the ring theory believe that it is either weak like those of Jupiter or so thin as to be almost non-existent.

Only time will tell in regards to some of the secrets that lie locked within the icy demeanor that was once the planet Pluto. With the spacecraft New Horizons estimated arrival within the Plutonian system to be in the summer of 2015, scientists will have quite a long wait to unlock some of those secrets.

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