Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturbo
The Secrets of Pluto
July 22nd, 2015
The Secrets of Pluto
The historic arrival of NASA's mini spacecraft, New Horizons, to the furthest of the planets, Pluto, has aroused the interest of the public for this dwarf planet. It was once considered the most distant object in our solar system, and often considered as unimportant and "cold" in the publics interest. It is a perfect time to let you know about the secrets that this "incredible" dwarf planet holds.
Planet or dwarf planet... Well Pluto was once considered to be a planet, just like MArs, Venus, Mercury and the other planets that make up our solar system. That changed with the discovery of "Eris" in 2005, a celestial body with 27% more mass than Puto. This caused the International Astronomical Union to degrade Pluto to a "dwarf" planet. Even though this decision generated many controversies among astronomers and the general public, researchers believe that it was a good call if we want to accurately characterize the objects that compose our solar system.
Pluto is a "dwarf planet" which has several names actually which vary by regions. In Polynesia it is called Whiro, representing the "God" of the underworld. In Japan, its name translates to The Star of the God King of the underworld. In India, Pluto is referred to as Yama, the guardian of hell.
So far, astronomers know that Pluto has five moons. These are: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Cerberus and Styx. Researchers and mission specialists of the New Horizons spacecraft hope to find several other moons in the near future.
Pluto is very small. If we compare Pluto to our Moon, we will see that Pluto is actually one-third the volume and one-sixth of the total mass of Earth's natural Satellite.
Pluto has a gigantic orbit! Its orbit lasts a quarter of a millennium meaning that It takes Pluto 248 Earth years to swing around the sun and according to theory, its orbit is much more eccentric than it should be. Pluto's orbit is inclined meaning that a small fraction of this orbit is closer to the Sun than the orbit of Neptune.
Pluto is the Planet of LOVE! Thanks to the images beamed back by the New Horizons Spacecraft, researchers found out that pluto has a heart-shaped landscape on its surface.
According to the newest images from New Horizons, Pluto has several icy mountains. "There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily cratered terrain to the west," said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team. "There’s a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we’re still trying to understand."
A mysterious Geology on Pluto. Images of Pluto shows what appear to be a hexagonal structure on the surface of the planet, "dark spots" and weird patterns that stretch out on the surface of the dwarf planet over 1500 kilometers. The strangest part is that they appear to be distributed in a uniform manner.
ıBı
Article posted by IvanThanks to: http://www.ewao.com
