Comparing Pluto To The Sun: Yellow Dwarf Star

“The sun is the heart of our solar system” (NASA Solar System Exploration) which is located at the center of the solar system. The sun has a radius of 432,168.6 miles. You would need 1.3 million Earths to fill up the sun. But the sun is not the largest star there are several that are much larger. The sun is the closest star to Earth which is around 93 million miles. The sun is like a big ball of gas. “In terms of the number of atoms, it is made of 91.0% hydrogen and 8.9% helium.” (NASA Solar System Exploration). But if you measure by mass the sun is made up of “70.6% hydrogen and 27.4% helium.” (NASA Solar System Exploration). Gravitational attraction which is made by pressure and temperature in the core holds together the sun. There is three main layers in the sun which are the core, the radiative zone, and the convective zone. Inside the core temperatures can reach 27 million degrees Fahrenheit

Many issues have arisen from the debate whether or not Pluto is a planet. Some astronomers say that Pluto should be classified as a “minor planet” due to its size, physical characteristics, and other factors. On the other hand, some astronomers defend Pluto’s planet status, citing several key features.

Pluto, a dwarf planet, and Uranus, a planet, take turns being the most distant of the major bodies of our solar system in reference to the Sun For years, scientists were under the mistaken hypothesis that Pluto was the most distant. Scientists, in an attempt to study astronomical data, learned their hypothesis was inaccurate. Fortunately, it is of the scientists nature to investigate all data. On the basis of the data, the astronomers learned of the fact Uranus and Pluto have intersecting orbits. In addition, during the course of their investigation, they learned much of the nature of Uranus and Pluto.

When Pluto comes close to the sun its surface melts turining into gas and then refreezes when is gets away from the sun. Due to its thin atmoshpere Pluto has no ablity to create the greenhouse effect so it can not really warm up.

Not only are Pluto and the other eight planets similar, they are also different in multiple ways. After all, Wilson A. Bentley once said: “No two snowflakes are alike.” As most, if not all, people know, planets have an orbit. However, Pluto’s orbit is a little different and unusual compared to the orbit of the other eight planets. Although Pluto takes longer than the other planets to one orbit around the sun (248 earth years), the main difference is that Pluto’s orbit doesn’t lie in the same plane as the eight planets, but is inclined at an angle of 17 degrees. Not only that, but its orbit is more elliptical, or oval-shaped, than others. This causes Pluto to sometimes passes inside the orbit of Neptune. In paragraph 3, it mentioned that

The more massive a body, the larger the gap between its lowest and highest orbit; the range of speeds at which a random body entering its gravity is likely to remain as its satellite. Sun has millions of satellites if you count all the asteroids; smaller planets tend to have one or two moons at most (Pluto with five being a notable and not fully explained exception)

In 2005 a discovery by Caltech astronomer, Mike Brown and his team found an object that was only slightly smaller than Pluto. Astronomers found several more object with the same classification in the Kuiper Belt. With these discoveries they figured it was only a matter of time before they found a mass that would be bigger than Pluto. Later on that year Mike Brown and his team reported the finding of a larger mass farther out from Pluto. With this discovery the astronomers began to doubt that we actually had 9 planets in our Solar System.

Pluto, a planet discovered in 1930 in Mexico City, was banned from the solar system in 2006 bringing controversy inside and out the International Astronomical Union Conference.

Pluto is the outer most planet of our solar system or it used to be until it was classified as a dwarf planet. The tiny planet is only 1473 miles in diameter. frozen methane and nitrogen cover the landscape as well as ice. Pluto is one of the coldest places in our solar system roughly negative 220 degrees C. the atmosphere is made up of methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide, the atmosphere extends about 1600 km above the surface. the surface is about 70% rock and 30% ice. we know that there is water available but it is frozen. The gravity of Pluto is about 0.62m/s2. Pluto has 5 moons and is about 39.48AU away from the sun resulting in such low temperatures.

Pluto 's life as a planet was very short, lasting only 75 years—which is less than a third of its orbital period. While Pluto independently orbits the sun in a spheroidal shape—two classifications for being considered a planet—Pluto lost its title with the discovery of Eris. Pluto also travels on a different plane than the rest of the planets, and because it has an extremely elliptical orbit, it occasionally crosses Neptune 's orbital path and, therefore, is occasionally closer to Earth than Neptune (Countdown, 2011). As a dwarf planet Pluto is the only binary planet in the system due to one of its five moons being half of its size.

We know that each planet has its own orbit. However Pluto was seen “having an affair” with Neptune’s orbit last February 7, 1979 and left 20 years later on February 11, 1999. This happened because Pluto’s orbit doesn’t lie in the same plane as the eight planets, but it is inclined at an angle of 17°. Because of this, every 20 out of the 248 years of Pluto’s revolution, it is actually closer to the sun than Neptune. I guess you could say Pluto really went “out of line”

In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh, an astronomer from the United States, discover what was first believed to be the ninth planet in our solar system, Pluto. For generations, people learned that the planets orbiting the sun ended with the very small Pluto. Only half as wide as the United States, Pluto was always an area of interest to astronomers but it became a major topic of discussion within the public when, in August of 2006, Pluto was demoted from its status as the ninth planet in our solar system to a dwarf planet. To be classified as a full-sized planet, the celestial body must orbit the sun, have a round shape, and be gravitationally dominant. Pluto orbits the sun and is round, but Pluto shares an orbital space with bodies of a similar size, so the planet is not considered gravitationally dominant. Pluto isn’t the only dwarf planet in our solar system, Eris and Ceres are both dwarf planets currently recognized by the International Astronomical Union.

Our very own solar system consists of the most important star called the Sun, it provides earth with the necessary energy in order to sustain life. There are 8 planets revolving around the sun and they are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,Neptune , and Pluto. However Pluto is no longer considered a planet. But that is still debatable. The Sun is the center o the Solar System, it has a nearly perfect sphere shape of hot plasma that generates a magnetic field. The asteroid belt is a circumstellardisc which is located in the Solar system between the planet of Mars and Jupiter. The solar system is just one of the many galaxies in our universe and there are more galaxies yet to be discovered.

To start off, our Sun is the most important part of our solar system. It is the biggest object and does have about 98% of the whole mass of the solar system. About 1.3 billion earths would fit inside the sun. The sun travels around the galaxy together with planets and other objects bound to it by gravitational forces. The largest of the bodies we call planets, most of which are in turn are orbited by smaller moons or satellites. These objects, together with many lesser masses, are known as the Solar system. The Sun is just a star, one of a hundred billion inhabiting our galaxy alone. Being a star the Sun is an example of the fundamental building blocks of our universe. It formed, 4.5 billion years ago, as the nucleus of a cloud of gas which was collapsing under its own gravitational attraction. At its formation, hydrogen was the most abundant gas, as elsewhere in the universe, and accounted for three quarters of the Sun’s original material. This will changes as the hydrogen is burned, and within the very central regions virtually all the hydrogen has been converted to helium. The outer regions have not yet taken part

Most of the Stars we see are similar in size to our sun. Some stars have almost have the same mass as the sun. Stars that are very dense have more mass than the Sun and can still be much smaller than the Sun. Less dense stars may have a larger diameter than the Sun but still have less mass than the Sun.