Pluto, the former planet, has been one of the most intriguing celestial bodies in our neighborhood for years. In this article, we will share the first real images of Pluto and provide you with a lot of background information and important facts about this fascinating celestial body.
For many years, Pluto was classified as a planet and was an integral part of our planetary system. However, in 2006, the professional world revised its definition of planets, which led to the reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet. Like many other planets and moons, Pluto was named after a figure of Roman mythology, where the deity Pluto describes the ruler of the underworld.
The first space probe that was sent into the immediate vicinity of Pluto was named New Horizons. Launched on January 19, 2006, the NASA spacecraft approached Pluto at a distance of up to 12,500 kilometers during its mission. The images that the space probe took of the dwarf planet show Pluto in all its galactic beauty. But what is the current state of knowledge about Pluto that we humans have discovered?
Pluto’s existence has been known to us humans since February 18th, 1930, when astronomers at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, finally succeeded in proving its presence after comparing numerous photographs of the sky. The employees of this renowned research facility were the first to discover the celestial body, and they also had the privilege of naming it. The dwarf planet was finally baptized the Roman god of the underworld due to the then 11-year-old Venesha Bernie’s name proposal, which impressed the experts so much that they immediately made it official.
Pluto is a dwarf planet far from the sun with an equatorial diameter of 2,374 kilometers, significantly smaller than our Earth’s moon, which has a diameter of around 3,474 kilometers. Pluto has always traveled in the so-called Kuiper Belt, a remote region within our solar system where an estimated 70,000 galactic objects cavort. Pluto itself is the oldest known celestial body in the Kuiper Belt.
While our blue home planet needs a year or 365 days to fully orbit the fixed star of our planetary system, Pluto needs a much longer period of time. In fact, it takes an incredible 248 years before the dwarf planet has ever orbited the sun. The days on Pluto are also much longer than on our Earth, with a Pluto day lasting 153 hours.
The spatial distance between Pluto and the sun, which amounts to about 6 billion kilometers, not only provides the giant orbit of the dwarf planet but naturally also has a direct influence on the climate of the celestial body. Because Pluto is so far away from the fixed star of our solar system, the surface of the dwarf planet will never be warmer than negative 218 degrees Celsius.
Pluto is a solid celestial body whose mass consists mainly of rock and water ice. With an area of around 17.6 million square kilometers, its surface is roughly the size of the South American continent. While scientists once thought that Pluto was once a moon of Neptune, we now know that the dwarf planet itself has at least five natural satellites, the largest of all Pluto moons being Charon.
Before the first spacecraft reached the immediate vicinity of Pluto, several years were to pass. As we mentioned briefly, it was the NASA probe New Horizons that first took a closer look at the celestial body. The New Horizons mission is part of NASA’s New Frontiers program, which aims to explore our solar system’s frontier. The spacecraft flew by Pluto on July 14, 2015, and was able to gather a wealth of information about the dwarf planet.
In conclusion, the first real images of Pluto have revealed its incredible
