Personal Narrative Essay On Pluto

Recently Pluto was declassified as a planet leaving only eight planets in Earth’s solar system. There were many mixed feelings about the declassification. Many people were happy because they thought pluto should have never been considered a planet in the first place. People thought that pluto was far to small and too far away to be a planet in the first place, over shadowed by the much larger nearer planets to it. Meanwhile other people were distraught at the thought that NASA could take Pluto’s title as a planet away that easily. Growing up with being taught about Pluto as a planet and learning so much about it many people were offended that the title of planet was striped from Pluto.

Pluto is unlike the other planets in that it has an icy surface instead of a rocky surface, like the inner 4 (terrestrial) planets, or a deep atmosphere, like the next 4 (gas giant) planets.

Astronomers now label Pluto as a “dwarf planet” because it does not meet all of the criteria to be a planet. It is also not alone in its orbit; it is part of a wide group of small-scale objects that have been detected revolving around the Sun beyond Neptune.

My Thesis statement is Phuto was once considered to be a planet but now Pluto is the most famous dwarf planet in our solar system. Pluto is made up of ⅔ of rock and ⅓ of ice. Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh on January 23, 1930. Pluto is very very cold you can't even imagine how much colder it is than Antarctic.If that happen in Earth the air would turn into snow that's how cold it would be about 230 degrees below zero Celsius. When you want to see Pluto up in the sky you can't even see Pluto with your naked eye. Pluto is very hard to see once you look in the telescope it look a little like a star even with the telescope.

In the outer limits of our solar system there is a planet unlike any other, Pluto. Pluto was discovered in February of 1930 by an American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh. It is the only planet to have been discovered by an American. All though we have known of the existence of Pluto for over thirty years now, there are still many mysteries surrounding this celestial body. Being the farthest planet has made it difficult to study Pluto, Adding to the obscurity of this strange planet is that the capability to send spacecraft such distances has never been achieved. Through the wonders of science and astronomy, there are many things that can be determined, concluded, and hypothesized about this obscure planet.

While Clyde Tombaugh was the first to identify Pluto as a planet (this was the correct conclusion at the time), that wasn’t the first time someone laid their eyes upon it. After announcing Tombaugh’s discovery, other astronomers rushed to their telescopes to see if they too had sighted the planet. More than a dozen images of Pluto from before 1930 discovery were found, yet no one realized what they had. There’s even a probable Pluto sighting from 1909.

Secondly,what is pluto,a planet,a planet oid or a comet? The outward-bound voyager one and two spacecraft were both launched in 1977,which started the drama about Pluto. Pluto is twice the size of Ceres and the largest known asteroid.

Pluto is very popular in the world and there is a lot of conversation on whether or not it should be considered a planet. Its size and unusual orbit are two factors that make it part of the dwarf family.

In comparison to Earth, Pluto is about 39 times further away, and therefore, it takes Pluto 248 Earth years to complete one orbit (Landau, Pluto 19). Compared to Earth’s 24 hours in a day, “a day on Pluto lasts 153 hours, or about 6 Earth days” (“Solar System Exploration: Pluto: In Depth.”). Pluto is also only 1,400 miles wide, which is “about half the width of the United States, or 2/3 the width of Earth’s moon” (“Solar System Exploration: Pluto: In Depth.”). Since Pluto is less dense than Earth, Pluto’s mass is an astonishing “one-sixth that of Earth’s moon” ( “Solar System Exploration: Pluto: In Depth.”). When New Horizons visited Pluto, it was also discovered that Pluto has a “heart shaped glacier that’s the size of Texas and Oklahoma” (“Solar System Exploration: Pluto: In Depth.”) and “mountains as high as the Rockies” (“Solar System Exploration: Pluto: In Depth.”). Overall, Pluto is much smaller and less dense than Earth, setting it apart from the other planets which are on a larger scale.

Have you ever been singled out of a group because you don 't “meet” their requirements? If not, think about how you would feel if your friends decided you were lower than them because your teeth were a little crooked or you were a little different than everyone else from time to time. Wouldn 't that hurt you and make you feel like you don 't mean anything to anyone. Well, thats how Pluto feels when everyone decided they didn 't like the way it orbited the sun or the fact that it wasn 't the biggest object in its orbit. Myself and others believe that Pluto should be a planet because it fits most of the requirements of being a planet, we should decide based off of facts, not votes and Pluto fits all the characteristics of a planet.

Many may urge that Pluto should be considered a planet for it has similar characteristics as the planets of the Solar System; however, others still believe that Pluto should not be considered a planet because of its slight differences and conditions that are not matched.

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

As i was growing up all my science teachers will always say that there was 9 planets in our solar system. But as time went by, little by little the 9 planets started fading, now in days there still debating whether considering Pluto a planet or not. According to scientists, pluto does not meet the standards that fall under the category to be a “planet”. Pluto has many features that they considered to be a dwarf planet like: its large distance from the sun, that it doesn't have its own orbit, its temperature is extremely cold, all these facts are the reason why many people are still debating pluto's status. Pluto was found by Clyde Tombaugh, an astronomer from the United States in 1930.

In elementary school, I only learned about eight planets with the famous saying of, ‘My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Nachos.’ So, I was never taught to think Pluto was a planet. I saw that it wasn’t planet on the internet and just went to with the concept. However, I wonder now, why can’t Pluto be a planet? Caltech planetary scientist Mike Brown can explain why Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

Internal Summary/Preview: After discussing the discovery of “Planet X” through the beliefs of Percival Lowell and the actual finding done by Clyde Tombaugh, we will shift to discussing how “Planet X” got the name Pluto.