A PowerPoint by; Destin, Carley, and Eden

What Does Pluto look like The planet Pluto is a dwarf planet, meaning it’s really small compared to other planets, even the smaller planets like Mars. Pluto consists of 30% water ice and 70% rock. It’s atmosphere is mostly methane, nitrogen, and carbon monoxide.

Exploration of Pluto NASA has learned a lot about Pluto from studying images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists used Hubble photos to discover four of Pluto's moons. Hubble also has taken pictures of Pluto's surface showing dark and light areas. Even with the powerful Hubble telescope, the images are still fuzzy. In 2006, NASA launched New Horizons, which is the first mission to Pluto. New Horizons is a spacecraft about the size of a piano that is flying to the outer edge of the solar system. The spacecraft took nine years to reach Pluto. On July 14, 2015, New Horizons arrived at the dwarf planet. By the end of 2015, New Horizons will have spent more than five months studying Pluto and its moons. New Horizons has cameras that will take pictures of Pluto. It also has scientific instruments that will gather information about Pluto. These pictures and data will help scientists know more about what Pluto is like. After it has finished studying Pluto and its moons, New Horizons will study objects deeper in the Kuiper Belt.

Pluto’s Features Observations of Pluto's surface by the New Horizons spacecraft revealed a variety of surface features, including mountains that reach as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters), comparable to the Rocky Mountains on Earth. While methane and nitrogen ice cover much of the surface of Pluto, these materials are not strong enough to support such enormous peaks, so scientists suspect that the mountains are formed on a bedrock of water ice.

Pluto’s Temperature It is very, very cold on Pluto. Scientists believe the temperature on Pluto is 375 to 400 degrees below zero. Due to the cold temperature of the planet is most likely covered in ice and frost.

Pluto’s Atmosphere It’s atmosphere is mostly methane, nitrogen, and carbon monoxide. The atmosphere is also much larger then Earth’s.

Pluto’s Moons Pluto has a total of 5 moons, Charon, Hydra, Nix, Kerberos, and Styx. Most of the moons are less like spherical moons and more like flying disks. Each moon is smaller then Charon

Roman or Greek God: Pluto In the same year that it was discovered, an 11-year-old girl from England suggested it be named "Pluto" after the Roman god of the dead.

Pluto is 29.7 astronomical units from the sun which is about 44.4 billion kilometers Pluto’s Distance from the Sun

How long is the orbit and long is a day? Pluto’s orbit takes 248 Earth years to orbit around the sun. One rotation (day) on Pluto is about 6 ½ Earth days.

Diameter, mass, and density of Pluto The diameter of the planet is 1,430 miles (2,302 km), only about two-thirds the diameter of the moon. The tiny body has a mass of only 1.31 x kilograms, about two- tenths of a percent of Earth's. Pluto's small size and low mass mean that it has a density of 2.05 grams per cubic centimeter, about 40 percent of Earth's density.

Interesting Pluto Facts Pluto was discovered on February 18th, 1930 by the Lowell Observatory. For the 76 years between Pluto being discovered and the time it was reclassified as a dwarf planet it completed under a third of its orbit around the Sun. Pluto has a eccentric and inclined orbit. This takes it between 4.4 and 7.3 billion km from the Sun meaning Pluto is periodically closer to the Sun than Neptune. Pluto is the largest dwarf planet. At one point it was thought this could be Eris. Currently the most accurate measurements give Eris an average diameter of 2,326km with a margin of error of 12km, while Pluto’s diameter is 2,372km with a 2km margin of error.

References  pluto.html pluto.html  8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-pluto-58.html 8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-pluto-58.html 