25 Curious Facts Concerning Pluto; The Demoted Planet

For most of our lives, we’ve considered Pluto a planet, much like any other planet in our solar system. However, all of that changed when in 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) reclassified Pluto as a “Dwarf Planet”. A controversial decision that was largely based on the discovery of numerous icy objects similar to Pluto with eccentric orbits. Needless to say, today Pluto is no longer classified as a planet (which could change due to some recent events with the IAU) but that does not make it any less interesting…
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Pluto was named by an 11-year-old girl, Venetia Burney of Oxford, England.
Pluto's surface is one of the coldest places in the solar system at roughly minus 375 degrees F (minus 225 degrees C).
Pluto is the only dwarf planet to once have been considered a major planet.
NASA's New Horizons mission will be the first probe to study Pluto. It was launched on January 2006, and will be near Pluto on July 2015.
In a very controversial move, Pluto was demoted to the status of a dwarf planet in 2006.
When Pluto was discovered it was initially believed to be larger than Earth.
Now astronomers know that it's about 1,455 miles (2,352 kilometers) across. Less than 20 percent as big as the Earth.
Pluto takes 248 Earth years to complete one orbit. To put this into perspective, Pluto still has 160 years to go in order to make a full orbit around the sun since it was first discovered.
Due to Pluto’s strange orbit, for a few years at a time, Pluto's orbit overlaps with Neptune's. This brings Pluto closer to Earth than Neptune, the eighth planet from the sun.
More in the video :)
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