Pluto

1. Pluto By Maggie Schembera

2. Description • Pluto is the farthest planet from the sun • Pluto is a cold, icy planet • On Pluto, the surface temperature is -230 degrees Celsius • Pluto is a terrestrial planet • Pluto has two moons called Nix and Hydra • It takes Pluto 6.39 days to do a complete rotation on its axis • Since I said it’s a cold, icy planet and that it’s a terrestrial planet, that means that Pluto is composed of rock and ice.

3. How far is it from the sun? • To answer that question, Pluto is 5,913,520,000 kilometers from the sun. • Also, Pluto is 39.5 Astronomical Units from the sun. • One AU = the distance from the sun to the Earth

4. How big is Pluto? • Pluto is the smallest planet. • It has a diameter of 2274 kilometers • That’s less than half the diameter of Mercury

5. Fun Fact # 1 • Pluto is the farthest planet from the sun. • It’s so far that if someone looked at the sun from Pluto, it would look like a bright little star.

6. Fun Fact #2 • Pluto follows a highly unusual elliptical path inclined at more than 17 degrees to the solar system plane, moving between 2.750 and 4.582 billion miles from the sun; its average distance is 3.666 billion miles.

7. Fun Fact #3 • A day on Pluto is 6.39 Earth days. • A year on Pluto is 247.7 Earth years.

8. Bibliography • Ridpath, Ian, ed. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Space. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1976. Print. • http://nineplanets.org