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Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris.
The geology of Pluto consists of the characteristics of the surface, crust, and interior of Pluto. Because of Pluto's distance from Earth, in-depth study from Earth is difficult. Many details about Pluto remained unknown until 14 July 2015, when New Horizons flew through the Pluto system and began transmitting data back to Earth. [1]
NASA's New Horizons probe has returned the first color images of Pluto. The small blurry dots in the newly-released photo are Pluto and Charon, the largest of Pluto's moons. New Horizons captured ...
He is a yellow-orange color, ... the name "Pluto" to capitalize on the then-newly-named ninth planet of Pluto. ... called the Brrrgh and it was always snowing there ...
New Horizons has provided scientists with a new surprise: Pluto has a tail.
[6] [a] Charon and Pluto are also tidally locked, so that they always present the same face toward each other. The IAU General Assembly in August 2006 considered a proposal that Pluto and Charon be reclassified as a double planet, but the proposal was abandoned. [7] Like Pluto, Charon is a perfect sphere to within measurement uncertainty. [8]
Pluto has a relatively eccentric orbit, inclined 17 degrees to the ecliptic plane. Pluto has a 2:3 resonance with Neptune, meaning that Pluto orbits twice around the Sun for every three Neptunian orbits. Kuiper belt objects whose orbits share this resonance are called plutinos. [203] Pluto has five moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra ...
Tombaugh Regio (/ ˈ t ɒ m b aʊ ˈ r ɛ dʒ i oʊ /), sometimes nicknamed "Pluto's heart" after its shape, [2] is the largest bright surface feature of the dwarf planet Pluto. [3] [4] [5] It lies just north of Pluto's equator, to the northeast of Belton Regio and to the northwest of Safronov Regio, which are both dark features. [6]