![]() From this distance, it takes sunlight 5.5 hours to travel from the Sun to Pluto. One astronomical unit (abbreviated as AU), is the distance from the Sun to Earth. If Earth was the size of a nickel, Pluto would be about as big as a popcorn kernel.įrom an average distance of 3.7 billion miles (5.9 billion kilometers), Pluto is 39 astronomical units away from the Sun. With a radius of 715 miles (1,151 kilometers), Pluto is about 1/6 the width of Earth. Pluto's interior is warmer, however, and some think there could even be an ocean deep inside. At such cold temperatures, water, which is vital for life as we know it, is essentially rock-like. The surface of Pluto is extremely cold, so it seems unlikely that life could exist there. ![]() But Pluto is definitely the Roman spelling." Potential for Life However, the Greek name "Plouton" (from which the Romans derived their name "Pluto") was also occasionally used as an alternative name for Hades. Elizabeth Vandiver, chair of the Department of Classics in Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, to clarify the origins of the name: "Pluto is the name of the Roman god of the Underworld, equivalent to the Greek Hades. Pluto's place in mythology can get a little muddled, so we asked Dr. Charon is named for the river Styx boatman who ferries souls in the underworld (as well as honoring Sharon, the wife of discoverer James Christy) Nix is named for the mother of Charon, who is also the goddess of darkness and night Hydra is named for the nine-headed serpent that guards the underworld Kerberos is named after the three-headed dog of Greek mythology (and called Fluffy in the Harry Potter novels), and Styx is named for the mythological river that separates the world of the living from the realm of the dead. Pluto's moons are named for other mythological figures associated with the underworld. Venetia Burney, the girl who named Pluto. He forwarded the name to the Lowell Observatory and it was selected. ![]() In 1930, Venetia Burney of Oxford, England, suggested to her grandfather that the new discovery be named for the Roman god of the underworld. Pluto is the only world (so far) named by an 11-year-old girl. Pluto and Charon are often referred to as a "double planet." Namesake Charon is about half the size of Pluto itself, making it the largest satellite relative to the planet it orbits in our solar system. Pluto is orbited by five known moons, the largest of which is Charon. On average, Pluto’s temperature is -387☏ (-232☌), making it too cold to sustain life. It's about 3.6 billion miles away from the Sun, and it has a thin atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. At that small size, Pluto is only about half the width of the United States. But after the discovery of similar intriguing worlds deeper in the distant Kuiper Belt, icy Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet. Discovered in 1930, Pluto was long considered our solar system's ninth planet. Powerful enough to stop a moon in its tracks.Pluto is a complex and mysterious world with mountains, valleys, plains, craters, and maybe glaciers. The force of gravity is a powerful thing. How distant? In about 50 billion years, long after the Sun has died, the Earth and the Moon will finally be tidally locked to each other, just like Romeo and Juliet, Fry and Leela, Pluto and Charon. In the distant distant future, the Moon will stop moving in the sky, and hang motionless, visible from only half the Earth. Now the process is continuing to make the Earth tidally locked to the Moon as well. This same process happened on all the large moons in the Solar System.īecause of its smaller mass, our Moon became tidally locked to the Earth billions of years ago. Size comparison of all the Solar Systems moons. Over time, the Earth’s gravity slowed down the rotation speed of the Moon until it stopped, forever. These bulges acted like handles that the Earth’s gravity could grab onto, and torque it back into place. The position of the bulges on the Moon were always a little out of alignment with the pull of gravity of the Earth. Vast amounts of rock need to shift and change shape to bulge towards the Earth and then settle down again, and this takes time. This meant that the part of the Moon bulged towards us was changing constantly, like water tides on Earth. It’s no big deal now, but in the ancient past, shortly after its formation, the Moon was spinning rapidly.
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