At the very edge of our solar system there is a small heavenly object that has found its way into the hearts of all: Right! It is Pluto!
Pluto was discovered in 1930 and at least in 2006 it planet status was revoked. For 76 years it was a planet like any other in our solar system, but then it was degraded to a dwarf planet. Pluto has always been a bit strange becuase it is even smaller than our moon, and no one had the courage to throw it out until in 2005 Eris was discovered. Eris is located behind Pluto and is about the same size. So you would have had to record it as the tenth planet in the solar system. That was the moment when the international astronomical union decided that it no longer has any lust for all these small planets. But what should Pluto and Eris be if they are no longer planets? They had created the new term dwarf planet especially for them. Since then Pluto has won many fans and supporters and a lot of people are demanding that Pluto be awarded to the status planet again. But in the end everything is not so bad, because since then three other dwarf planets have been discovered. With Eris there are now a total of five dwarf planets, so Pluto is now in a pretty good company.
Pluto also has a small moon called Charon. The diameter of Charon is only about half as small as that of Pluto. Thus Charon is unusually large for a moon of a planet. To the comparison: the diameter of our moon is four times as small as that of our earth. Pluto and Charon could also be called double planets. On the surface of Charon there is a dark region which the scientists called Mordor because it looks like the dark land of Sauron in Lord of the Rings.
Pluto itself was named after the Roman god of the underworld. The name was proposed by the then eleven-year-old Venetia Katharine Douglas Burney and received broad approval because all other planets are also named after Roman gods. The roman god Pluto is probably better known by his greek name Hades, the god of the underworld.
Pluto was discovered by a 24 year old young man. But until then the astronomers believed that there had to be a so-called transneptunian object, a planet behind Neptune. But nobody was able to locate this planet. Then in 1930 the 24-year-old Clyde Tombaugh, who worked in an observatory in Arizona, looked through the telescope and discovered the present dwarf planet. Clyde Tombaugh was already a planet explorer at the age of 24. By the way, Clyde Tombaugh's home state Illinois has decided by law that Pluto will continue to be recognized as a normal planet there. Cool action!
Pluto needs 247.94 earthyears for one orbit around the sun. Since Pluto's orbit around the sun is very eccentric, its distance varies from 29 to 49 astronomical units. Pluto also rotates once around its own axis in 6.387 earthdays. Pluto's diameter is 2374 km, which makes it smaller than the seven largest moons in our solar system. Besides Charon, Pluto actually has four more very small moons, but it is assumed that they are to collapse on one of the two objects in the future due to the gravitational field between Pluto and Charon or be catapulted away, they are not often mentioned.
Mickey Mouse's dog was named after Pluto and not vice versa, as many always think. Pluto was discovered in 1930 and in the same year Disney invented the Mickey Mouse dog. In honor of the newly discovered planet, Mickey Mouse's dog was unceremoniously called Pluto. If you take a closer look at Pluto's surface, you'll find an amazing similarity between the two.
