Facts About Pluto
Katie Beck
- Pluto is named after the Greek God of the underworld.
- Pluto was discovered on February 18th, 1930 by Lowell Observatory and completed under a third of it's orbit around the sun before it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.
- It has five moons; Charon (discovered in 1974), Hydra (2005), Nix (2005), Kerberos (2011), and Styx (2012).
- Pluto is one third water, that being in the form of ice. The other two thirds are rock.
- No space craft has ever visited Pluto.
- Pluto sometimes has an atmosphere; during it's elliptical (when it's close to the sun) Pluto's ice thaws and forms a thin atmosphere primarily of nitrogen with a little methane and carbon monoxide. When it travels away from the sun the atmosphere then freezes back to it's solid state.