While those of us with a scientific bent are geeking out over the incredible images of Pluto and its moons being sent back by NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft (for example, HERE), an article published last October on dailyhop.com reveals some interesting facts about the dwarf planet:

– Pluto’s surface temperature is -225 deg C (-375 deg F). Recall that absolute zero isn’t much colder (-273 deg C).

– Pluto takes 248 Earth years to orbit the Sun

– Pluto has five known moons, several of which were only discovered recently.

– Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, is so large (over half the diameter of Pluto itself) that some astronomers consider Pluto and Charon to be a double dwarf planet:

– One of the reasons Pluto was demoted from major planet to dwarf planet is that there are asteroids in our solar system that are larger than Pluto.

Although not mentioned specifically in the article, the illustration (above) of Pluto’s orbit along with those of the major planets shows quite clearly why Pluto doesn’t belong in the same category as the major planets. Note how all the major planets share the same orbital plane.

Well, it doesn’t really matter what we call it. The pictures we are now getting of an object 3 billion miles from Earth are still WAY cool.

IMAGE REFERENCES:

Planetary Orbits: http://dailyhop.com/24-curious-facts-concerning-pluto-the-demoted-planet/

Pluto and Charon: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-big-is-pluto-new-horizons-settles-decades-long-debate