PLUTO

BACKGROUND

• Pluto has a 200 year winter and a 248 year orbit
• If you lived on Pluto you would not become a full year old
• It is really dark because of the lage distance away from the sun
• Pluto has not completed a half of an orbit since 1930
• From sunrise to sunrise is 153 hours

LOOKS

• Nobody knows what Pluto actually looks like
• Pluto is supposedly brownish
• Darker spots are supposedly broken down methane frost
• Pluto is smaller than our moon
• Looking at its surface is like trying to read a postage stamp from 40mi

STRUCTURE

• Pluto is covered in a thin icy crust but a large rock core
• The mantle is rich with water ice mixed with other gas ice
• Pluto is ice poor, compared to most other dwarf planets
• The surface temperature is averaged at -380 degrees F
• Pluto is 70% rock & 30% water ice

ATMOSPHERE

• Astronomers did not even know that there was a atmosphere
• The atmosphere was confirmed in 1988, and expected to be simialar to Tritons
• The atmosphere is about 120 degrees warmer than the surface
• Whithout much gravity atmosphere escapes but is replenished by evaporating ice
• 1% of mass was lost that way

ORBIT

• For twenty years of Pluto's 248 year orbit it is closer to the sun than neptune
• The closest to Neptune is 51.6 billion miles
• The closest to Uranus is 944 million miles
• Spends most time far above or below the plane of the solar system
• Pluto has a far from circular, eliptical orbit

MOONS

• Pluto's largest mooon is called Charon
• Two smaller moons of Pluto are named Nix & Hydra
• Charon is about half the size of Pluto
• Pluto and Charon swing around eachother instead of only Charon orbiting
• Charon is said to be covered with dirty water ice

SPACE MISSIONS

• A satellite called New Horizons was launched to Pluto
• New Horizons is scheduled to reach Pluto in 2015
• It was send to make surface maps and analyse the atmophere
• It is suppost to pass 6,200 miles from Pluto
• It is suppost to pass 17,000 miles from Charon