Pluto

Pluto

 * discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh
 * named after a god (roman god of the underworld)
 * Pluto has 3 moons
 * Charon (named after a ferryman who carried souls across the river Styx; half of Pluto)
 * Nix (46km)
 * Hydra (61km)
 * it takes Pluto 248 years to orbit
 * a day on Pluto lasts 6 days and 9 hours, meaning it has a very slow speed of rotation
 * Pluto's atmosphere contains of methane, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide
 * its surface is made of rock and ice
 * takes the sun 5 1/2 hours to reach Pluto (takes 8 minutes to reach earth)
 * Pluto is mere 4.3 billion km away from earth. At its furthest, 7.528 billion km away

15 Interesting Facts:

 * small rock object that lies at the very edge of the solar system
 * Pluto is 2/3 size of Earth's moon
 * Pluto has been recently named the "dwarf planet"
 * at some point in Pluto's orbit, Pluto is closer then Neptune to the sun
 * mass is 1.31x10.^22 kg (less then 0.24% the mass of the earth)
 * if Pluto was closer to the sun then it would be a comet
 * Pluto's moon Charon might have ice geysers
 * spacecraft is making its way to Pluto right now; left in 2005 and should arrive there in 2015
 * the sun would look like a bright star from Pluto
 * Astronomers believe that Pluto was once Neptune's moon
 * Pluto has its own atmosphere
 * as Pluto moves away from the sun, its atmosphere gets colder and it freezes to the surface
 * 44 degrees above absolute zero
 * discovered when a seen passing a star
 * color of Pluto is reddish-brown