Pluto: Dwarf Planet

457 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Why pluto could be considered a planet

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by an astronomer from the United States. Pluto used to be known as the ninth planet from the sun, but today it is known as a dwarf planet. A dwarf planet still orbits the sun but is smaller than other planets. The reason we don’t classify it as a regular planet is because it cannot clear objects that are in its orbital path. This means that if there are rocks or debris it will just run into it instead of destroying it. Pluto is about 3.6 billion miles away from the sun, this is 40 times the distance of earth to the sun. Pluto is only about 1400 miles around which is half the size of the United States. The moon is slightly bigger than pluto. It takes Pluto it takes about 248 years to orbit the sun which means that …show more content…

He called this “New Planet” Eris. The finding of this new object got many astronomers thinking about if Pluto should be a planet. Soon after they declared that Pluto was no longer a planet because of it’s size and distance from the sun. These planets are now called Dwarf planets, but they are also called Plutoids which is a name given to a Dwarf Planet when it is beyond Neptune’s orbit. Pluto is very cold, this is based on the fact that it is the farthest “Planet” away from the sun making it very cold and very dark. It is 375-400 degrees fahrenheit below zero. Being that it is so far away from the earth and sun it is hard to really study Pluto’s physical characteristics but many have agreed that Pluto is covered with Ice because of the low temperature. Some of the observations that scientists have recorded are that it has a tilted orbit and it orbits in an oval instead of a circle. The main idea of Pluto is that it is a Dwarf planet that can’t clear its orbit. Pluto also is very cold and more than likely covered in ice, it also is very far from the earth and has 5 moons. Personally I do not think that Pluto should be a planet because it is too small and it can’t clear its orbital

Show More
Related

  • Reflection Of The Book Plutopia

    1151 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagine working with radioactive materials in a secret camp, and the government not telling you that this material is harmful to your body. In the book Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters by Kate Brown, she takes her readers on a journey to expose what happened in the first two cities that started producing plutonium. Brown is an Associate Professor of History at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has won a handful of prizes, such as the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize for the Best Book in International European History, and was also a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. Brown wrote this book by looking through hundreds of archives and interviews with people,

    Read More

  • Poem Analysis: Pluto Shits On The Universe

    597 Words  | 2 Pages

    Pluto Shits on the Universe is a strong and defiant poem that expresses the rejection of rules, rules placed upon others by those who cannot even begin to control them. After being discredited as a planet for her uncharted and chaotic movements, Pluto reacts. She expresses her freedom from the rules of documented science, from our sense of time, from our titles and competition. This poem has tones of defiance, confidence and independence created through its syntax, diction, and repetition.

    Read More

  • The Kuiper Belt In The Solar System

    1289 Words  | 3 Pages

    It was at first thought to be bigger than Pluto later it ended up being somewhat smaller than Pluto. Eris finishes one rotation around the Sun in 580 years. Eris is the reason why Pluto’s planetary status was changed to being a dwarf planet. The Kuiper Belt has a section called Classic Kuiper Belt. This is the busiest area of this belt and is situated at a distance of around 42 to 48 AU. In the beginning, when the solar system was created gas, dust and rocks, came together to form planets. Most of the debris was swept away by gravitational pull for those planets, but some debris survived because they were far enough away to not be affected by the gravitational pull for those planets. Finding the Kuiper Belt gave us more insight into the mystery of the objects located in the Kuiper belt. Most KBO’s are so far away that their measurements cannot be concretely calculated. By using the data collected by the Spitzer space Telescope most of the KBO’s have known sizes. In 2015 the New Horizon Spacecraft flew past Pluto for an up close exploration of the Kuiper Belt Objects. The primary real expectation of the Kuiper belt's presence, most planetary researchers now agree, originated from Uruguayan cosmologist Julio

    Read More

  • NASA Program Pros And Cons

    1753 Words  | 4 Pages

    ... Americans take for granted the technology that saves their lives in car crashes, firefighting, airplane crashes, and countless other applications. Much of the generation from the 1960’s may remember how inspired they felt by NASA’s ambition to do something as amazing as walk on the moon. Today, that inspiration is found in many smaller; yet still significant, creations for NASA programs. Somebody once dreamed of capturing an asteroid, and now NASA strives to make that dream come true. For those people who stare at the sky and question the twinkling lights blinking at them, NASA endeavors to study the more advanced systems of stars by using Pluto as a scale model. Simply because they promote better inventions, encourage creative dreams, and produce new actualities, NASA programs are worth every penny and Americans need to reconsider where they would be without NASA.

    Read More

  • Planet Comparison- Uranus and Neptune

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    A new moon was discovered for Uranus that had previously been overlooked for 13 years. As of 1999 this discovery brought the total of Uranus’s satellites to 18.

    Read More

  • Three Ungraded Formative Assessment Paper

    551 Words  | 2 Pages

    Now that Pluto is no longer included, how many planets are there left in the Solar System?

    Read More

  • Pluto: A Planet?

    1670 Words  | 4 Pages

    Indeed, most of the problem is that there is no formal definition of a planet. Furthermore, it is very difficult to invent one that would allow the solar system to contain all nine planets. I suggest that for an object to be classified as a planet, it must embody three characteristics. It must be in orbit around a star (thus removing the larger satellites from contention), it must be too small to generate heat by nuclear fusion (so dwarf stars are excluded) and it must be massive enough to have collapsed to a more or less spherical shape (which excludes comets, and most of the asteroids). These criteria would admit a few of the larger asteroids and probably some of the Kuiper belt objects as well, but adding a requirement for a planet to have a minimum diameter of 1,000 km would remove the larger asteroids from contention while retaining Pluto.

    Read More

  • pluto

    1835 Words  | 4 Pages

    Although Pluto was discovered in 1930, limited information on the distant planet delayed a realistic understanding of its characteristics. Today Pluto remains the only planet that has not been visited by a spacecraft, yet an increasing amount of information is unfolding about this peculiar planet. The uniqueness of Pluto's orbit, rotational relationship with its satellite, spin axis, and light variations all give the planet a certain appeal.

    Read More

  • Uranus

    2618 Words  | 6 Pages

    Four years passed before Uranus was recognized as a new planet, the first to be discovered in 'modern' times.

    Read More

  • The Black Cat

    1018 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gill, N. S. "Pluto - The Roman and Greek God Pluto." About.com Ancient / Classical History. N.S. Gill, n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2014.

    Read More

  • Should Kepler-186f Be Colonised?

    774 Words  | 2 Pages

    Time should not be wasted trying to escape Earth’s issues and humans should take responsibility for the welfare of the planet they live on. Earth has the perfect conditions for life to thrive, strong enough gravity, an atmosphere that retains a balance of the gases needed for life, plenty of water and the perfect distance away from the sun, along with other things (Choi, 2012). Another point is that colonising and terraforming Kepler-186f would be extremely expensive and difficult, and if the project were to fail it would have devastating effects for Earth and everything living on it (Globus, 2016). Although Kepler-186f is the most similar planet to Earth ever found, it is still significantly different, and scientists at this point do not know enough about the planet to determine whether or not it is suitable for human life. This means that there is a chance that the planet would have to be terraformed and altered to suit humans, which would make the project even more

    Read More

  • The Moon: The Formation Of The Moon

    1516 Words  | 4 Pages

    The moon is probably the most noticeable object outside of earth atmosphere besides the sun. There are a great number of facts about the moon. Most of these facts include size and distance of the moon compared to the Earth. Our moon's proper name is "Luna". Luna is 238,900 miles away from earth, and 27% smaller than earth. The moon is the most studied object outside of earths atmosphere. Luna is the only naturally made object that humans have set foot on besides earth.

    Read More

  • Pluto Planet

    893 Words  | 2 Pages

    In addition to its moons, Pluto has a core, geology, seasons, and an atmosphere. Alan Stern is a planetary scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA). According to Stern, “I can’t think of a single distinguishing characteristic that would set apart Pluto and other things that you’d call a planet, other than its size. So I like to say, ‘a Chihuahua is still a dog.’” Also from Discovery Education the text states, “Other astronomers have noted that their colleagues sometimes call Jupiter a giant planet. Why can’t Pluto be called a dwarf planet without being downgraded from planet status?” Another fact stated from Discovery Education was, “about 90% of the planets known to astronomers are outside Earth’s solar system. Some of these extra-solar planets do not fit the IAU’s definition of a planet. Yet IAU astronomers still refer to them as planets.” USA Today stated, “The debate among Gingerich, Williams and Dimitar Sasselov, director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, took place Sept. 18 with scientists, teachers and civilians watching. Two of the three, Gingerich and Sasselov, said Pluto should be a planet. A vote among audience members agreed.” Another statement mentioned by USA Today was, “Harvard science historian Owen Gingerich, who chairs the IAU planet definition committee, argued at a forum last month that "a planet is a culturally defined word that changes over time," and that Pluto is a planet.” Finally from CNN they interviewed Alan Stern, a member of NASA, who said, “We're just learning that a lot of planets are small planets, and we didn't know that before” and “Fact is, in planetary science, objects such as Pluto and the other dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt are considered planets and called planets in everyday discourse in scientific

    Read More

  • Astronomy

    1026 Words  | 3 Pages

    Even though we know a great amount more than the astronomers in the past, there is still an even larger amount we do not know about the universe to this day. Even our own solar system contains many questions yet to be answered. Some of these include the possibility of a planet beyond Pluto (Planet X), the means by which the system was created, and even the possibility of a sister star to the Sun named Nemesis. Another astronomical mystery is the creation of the universe. In time, many questions will be answered but some will always remain. Astronomy is something that will never be completely understood.

    Read More

  • Mercury's Solar System

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    Our solar system has eight planets, their moons and satellites, and they are all orbiting the Sun. The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto used to be the ninth planet but IAU changed the definition of planet and Pluto did not meet the standards so it is now a Dwarf planet.

    Read More

More about Pluto: Dwarf Planet

Open Document