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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.
On December 6, 2014, New Horizons was brought back online for the Pluto encounter, and instrument check-out began. [12] On January 15, 2015, the spacecraft began its approach phase to Pluto. On July 14, 2015, at 11:49 UTC , it flew 12,500 km (7,800 mi) above the surface of Pluto, [ 13 ] [ 14 ] which at the time was 34 AU from the Sun, [ 15 ...
For example, the synodic period of the Moon's orbit as seen from Earth, relative to the Sun, is 29.5 mean solar days, since the Moon's phase and position relative to the Sun and Earth repeats after this period. This is longer than the sidereal period of its orbit around Earth, which is 27.3 mean solar days, owing to the motion of Earth around ...
Pluto belongs to a group of objects that distantly orbit the sun called the Kuiper Belt, where thousands of icy remnants left over from the formation of the solar system linger. Eight of the 10 ...
Timelapse of Voyager 2 approaching Jupiter. The plains of Pluto, as seen by New Horizons after its nearly 10-year voyage. Remotely guided space probes have flown by all of the observed planets of the Solar System from Mercury to Neptune, with the New Horizons probe having flown by the dwarf planet Pluto and the Dawn spacecraft currently orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres.
Pluto moved back into Capricorn June 11, 2023. Pluto will be in Aquarius again from Jan. 20 to Sept. 1, 2025. Pluto will then moving back to Capricorn from Sept. 1 to Nov. 19, 2024.
In gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter (the combined center of mass) or, if one body is much more massive than the other bodies of the system combined, its speed relative to the center of mass of the most massive body.
To give further context to the importance of this cosmic forecast, slow-moving Pluto's last rendezvous in Aquarius was in the late 1700s. This was aligned with the timeline of the American ...