Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Dwarf Planet: Pluto

                    The Dwarf Planet: Pluto 
     Pluto is one of the dwarf planets in our solar system. Pluto is located in the kuiper belt, similar to the asteroid belt. (The kuiper belt is a belt of asteroids that is after Neptune. It surrounds the 8 planets and the sun.) Instead of being aligned with the other planets' orbit, Pluto's orbit is tilted. It takes this planet 248 Earth days to complete an orbit around the sun. 
     Pluto is made of mostly ice and rocks. Astronomers believe that its core is made of rocks and its mantle is ice. Pluto has a thin atmosphere when it goes near the sun, but the atmosphere disappears when Pluto is not near the star. The reason for this is because when Pluto goes near the sun, some of the ice on the surface melts and evaporation occurs. When Pluto is far away, its surface becomes ice again. 
     Pluto has 5 known satellites: Charon, Styx, Hydra, Nix, and Kerberos. Charon is the largest and most inner moon. Kerberos and Styx are the smallest moons and are the outer moons. 
     In the 1900s, astronomers classified Pluto as a planet. But there was a problem. There were other space objects that were even bigger than Pluto. There were heated debates about whether Pluto is a planet or not. But in 2006, Pluto was classified as a dwarf planet. Pluto has no rings and it is about 5.8 billion km. away from the sun.

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