Last week, I had the privilege of attending my younger daughter's third grade class presentation on the solar system. The students were paired off, assigned a planet to research, and tasked with creating a PowerPoint slide deck on their findings. Parents were beaming with pride as their children stood in front of the group, sharing attributes and facts on each of the planets. They covered eight in total - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (new pronunciation these days), and Neptune. So long, Pluto. Pluto has been planet non grata since August 2006, when it was kicked out of the official solar system and downgraded to a "dwarf planet." I reflected on my own middle school trip to the planetarium and the solar system poster purchased from the gift shop. I'll admit to a strange curiosity about the tiny planet, sitting off to the right and farthest from the Sun, on that poster.
In the spirit of inclusion, I tracked down some information on Pluto to round out the presentation. Here is what I came away with:
Pluto was discovered by an American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, on February 18, 1930
It was named after the Roman god of the underworld by 11-year old Venetia Burney of Oxford, England
Pluto is ~ 1,400 miles wide (1/2 the width of US or 2/3 the width of Earth's moon)
One year on Pluto is the equivalent of 248 Earth years with one day lasting 153 hours
The atmosphere is made up of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide
Pluto's surface temperature cannot accommodate life at -378 to -396 degrees F
On a lighter note, Disney's beloved dog was named after planet Pluto as was the radioactive element, Plutonium - the same stuff Doc Emmett Brown stole from the Libyans in Back to the Future.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has three criteria for a planet to remain in the solar system: 1) It must orbit around the Sun, 2) It must have sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (have an almost round shape), and 3) It must have "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit. Pluto passes the first two but fails on number three, as it shares its orbital space with other large, icy masses (Aspiring astronomy geeks can dig deeper into the Kuiper Belt). So that was it for Pluto. The powers that be convened, there was a vote and subsequent downgrade.
In July 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft did a Pluto flyby and captured some new images of the icy ex-planet. One of them was of a massive surface indentation in the shape of a heart (you can see it in the image above if you turn your head to the right). Pluto might be a downgraded, dwarf planet but.....it still has a heart. Respect.
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