Pluto
Pluto, once considered the ninth planet, is now classified as a dwarf planet. It’s an icy world located in the distant reaches of the solar system.
Pluto, once considered the ninth planet, is now classified as a dwarf planet. It’s an icy world located in the distant reaches of the solar system.
Pluto is a dwarf planet located in the Kuiper Belt, a region beyond Neptune filled with icy bodies and dwarf planets. It was once considered the ninth planet of the solar system, but in 2006 it was reclassified as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
Pluto has a thin atmosphere composed mainly of nitrogen, with small amounts of methane and carbon monoxide. The atmosphere expands when Pluto is closer to the Sun in its orbit and contracts when it is farther away. The atmosphere is too thin to support life as we know it.
Pluto has five known moons. The largest of these moons, Charon, is almost half the size of Pluto itself and is tidally locked to Pluto, meaning both objects always show the same face to each other. The other moons are Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra.
Pluto has a faint system of rings, discovered in 1978. These rings are composed of dust and small particles and are quite faint compared to the rings of other planets like Saturn.
NASA's New Horizons mission flew past Pluto in July 2015, providing the first detailed images and data of this distant world. The spacecraft's observations helped scientists learn more about Pluto's surface, atmosphere, moons, and composition, reigniting interest in this distant world.