The Little Wanderer Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand. I don’t care, I’m still free, you can’t take Pluto from me. Probably the most debated planet, Pluto was discovered in 1905 by Percival Lowell with predictions calculated through the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. However, Pluto was officially seen and declared as a planet in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh through a telescope (“Pluto Discovered.”). It has only been recently that we have discovered more about Pluto as the mission, New Horizons by NASA, just reached the planet. There have been no other missions to Pluto as our space technology is still fairly new. In fact, even though it has been 85 years since the discovery of Pluto, it still has not even completed a single
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It’s surface is made up of a rocky core surrounded by ice (Redd). Pluto’s mass and size, relative to earth, weighs about 1.30900 × 1022 kg and 1185.9256 km in diameter ("Mass and Density of Pluto" ); (Redd). Compared to Earth, Pluto’s density is 14330 kg/m³ lighter than Earth’s, being dense as 1880 kg/m³ ("Mass and Density of Pluto") . In addition, Pluto’s surface gravity, 0.658 m/s², is 1/12 smaller than Earth’s (“Pluto”). Composing of frozen nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide, Pluto is mostly made up of rock (“How Cold is Pluto?”). And although it’s internal features is not completely known to us, we can infer that it’s covered by a thick layer of ice and rock covering a small dense rocky core (“How Cold is …show more content…
With an average surface temperature of -229C, Pluto’s surface is mostly constituted by icy formations of frozen rock and water (Cain). The climate of Pluto does not diverge too much from the already icy stasis that exists on the surface. Pluto maintains a yearly margin of 11 degrees C between -223C (the highest temperature) and -233C (the lowest temperature) (Redd). However, when Pluto is closest to the sun in its elliptical orbit, it’s icy surface manages to sublimate a very small water vapor based atmosphere. Sublimation, or the ability of a solid to skip liquid phase and go directly to gas phase, allows for Pluto to maintain this atmosphere for just it's Summer (Redd). The Sun’s electromagnetic radiation, more specifically the infrared radiation, is crucial to the formation of this atmosphere. When the Sun is closer, the infrared radiation heats up the surface of the (*clenches teeth*) dwarf planet, and sublimates the atmosphere (Redd). Pluto’s closest point to the sun is about 4.44 billion kilometers away from the Sun, whilst its farthest point may be even farther than 7.9 billion kilometers (Dunbar). Ultraviolet and other kinds of high frequency radiation do not have any effect on Pluto, as most of them do not reach the surface. It has been estimated that Pluto’s core temperature has been slowly rising over
It’s surface is made up of a rocky core surrounded by ice (Redd). Pluto’s mass and size, relative to earth, weighs about 1.30900 × 1022 kg and 1185.9256 km in diameter ("Mass and Density of Pluto" ); (Redd). Compared to Earth, Pluto’s density is 14330 kg/m³ lighter than Earth’s, being dense as 1880 kg/m³ ("Mass and Density of Pluto") . In addition, Pluto’s surface gravity, 0.658 m/s², is 1/12 smaller than Earth’s (“Pluto”). Composing of frozen nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide, Pluto is mostly made up of rock (“How Cold is Pluto?”). And although it’s internal features is not completely known to us, we can infer that it’s covered by a thick layer of ice and rock covering a small dense rocky core (“How Cold is …show more content…
With an average surface temperature of -229C, Pluto’s surface is mostly constituted by icy formations of frozen rock and water (Cain). The climate of Pluto does not diverge too much from the already icy stasis that exists on the surface. Pluto maintains a yearly margin of 11 degrees C between -223C (the highest temperature) and -233C (the lowest temperature) (Redd). However, when Pluto is closest to the sun in its elliptical orbit, it’s icy surface manages to sublimate a very small water vapor based atmosphere. Sublimation, or the ability of a solid to skip liquid phase and go directly to gas phase, allows for Pluto to maintain this atmosphere for just it's Summer (Redd). The Sun’s electromagnetic radiation, more specifically the infrared radiation, is crucial to the formation of this atmosphere. When the Sun is closer, the infrared radiation heats up the surface of the (*clenches teeth*) dwarf planet, and sublimates the atmosphere (Redd). Pluto’s closest point to the sun is about 4.44 billion kilometers away from the Sun, whilst its farthest point may be even farther than 7.9 billion kilometers (Dunbar). Ultraviolet and other kinds of high frequency radiation do not have any effect on Pluto, as most of them do not reach the surface. It has been estimated that Pluto’s core temperature has been slowly rising over