WHY IS PLUTO NO LONGER A PLANET?

 HEY EVERYONE!!

I WELCOME YOU ALL AFTER A LONG TIME...WITH ANOTHER INTERESTING TOPIC!

PLUTO WILL ALWAYS BE THE NINTH PLANET TO US...RIGHT?

SO LET'S TALK ABOUT PLUTO'S JOURNEY...FROM THE NINTH PLANET TO A DWARF PLANET.

PLUTO ...why its no longer a planet?

The INTERNATIONAL AMERICAN UNION (IAU) declared that it is a dwarf planet becoz it did not meet the three criteria the IAU uses to define a full-sized planet. Unfortunately, pluto meets all the criteria except one...it has not cleared its neighboring region of other objects.

Pluto is the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system and was discovered in the 1930s. It was the 9th planet of our solar system for 75years until the discovery of Eris and other similar objects that follows the journey from being a planet to a dwarf planet.

Before moving on further I would like to tell you the three criteria of IAU for a full-sized planet:

👉THE OBJECT MUST BE IN ORBIT AROUND THE SUN.

👉THE OBJECT MUST BE MASSIVE ENOUGH TO BE ROUNDED BY ITS OWN GRAVITY.

👉IT MUST HAVE CLEARED THE NEIGHBOURHOOD AROUND ITS ORBIT.

I know you haven't got the third point clearly...let talk more about this." Cleared the neighborhood" means that the planet has to be the dominant gravitational body in their orbit around the sun.

The pluto was rejected as a planet coz of this reason only becoz pluto was just .007 times the mass of the other objects in its orbit.

OKAY SO NOW LET'S GO TO THE HISTORY OF THIS PLANET...

The object known as Pluto was discovered on February 18,1930 at the Lowell observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, by astronomer CLYDE W TOMBAUGH with contribution from WILLIAM H.PICKERING.This period in astronomy was one of the intense planet-hunting.💥

In 1906, Percival Lowell started an extensive project in a search of a possible ninth planet which he termed as "Planet X".Lowell and his observatory conducted the search until he died in 1916. Unknown to Lowell, in 1915, his observatory had captured two faint images of Pluto, but they were not recognized for what they were. But you know what Lowell was not the first to unknowingly photograph Pluto. There are sixteen known pre-discoveries, and the oldest one is made by the YERKES observatory on August 20, 1909.

NOW COMES THE INTERESTING PART...

The search for Planet X did not resume until 1929, then the job was handed to Clyde Tombaugh, a 23-year-old Kansan who had just arrived at the Lowell Observatory. Tombaugh’s task was to systematically image the night sky in pairs of photographs taken two weeks ago, then examine each pair and determine whether any objects had shifted position.

Using a blink comparator machine, he rapidly shifted back and forth between views of each of the plates to create the illusion of movement of any objects that had changed position or appearance between photographs.

On February 18, 1930, after nearly a year of searching, Tombaugh discovered a possible moving object on photographic plates taken on January 23 and January 29 of that year. After the observatory obtained further confirmatory photographs, news of the discovery was telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory on March 13, 1930.

The discovery made headlines across the globe(after all it's the ninth planet). The Lowell Observatory, which had the right to name the new object, received over 1,000 suggestions from all over the world; the name Pluto was proposed by Venetia Burney, an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England. Venetia was interested in classical mythology as well as astronomy and considered the name for the god of the underworld appropriate for such a dark and cold world.

THAT'S HOW WE HAVE FOUND OUR NINTH PLANET...WOAH! WHAT A JOURNEY!✨✨

I THINK WE FORGOT TO DISCUSS ONE OF THE IMPORTANT TOPICS: THE SIZE, MASS, AND DISTANCE OF THIS PLANET.

LET'S DISCUSS IT...

Due to its orbit, Pluto comes closer to the sun than Neptune. The light from the sun reaches pluto in about 5.5 hours with an average distance of 39.5AU. Pluto is 49.8AU distance from the sun. Currently, Pluto is 34.4AU distance from the Earth🌍,light takes about 4 hours and 45 minutes to travel from it to us.

The mass of pluto is 1.3 * 10 raise to the power 22kg,which is only 0.22% tht of Earth.It has a diameter of 2,376 kilometers(or 1476 miles) and a radius of 1,188 kilometers(or 738 miles).It is about 18% the size tht of the Earth and 70% of the diameter tht of the Earth's moon.🌚

Time for some intresting facts about this planet..!

💦PLUTO IS NAMED AFTER THE ROMAN GOD OF UNDERWORLD.

💦PLUTO HAS FIVE KNOWN MOONS(The moons are Charon (discovered in 1978,), Hydra and Nix (both discovered in 2005), Kerberos originally P4 (discovered 2011) and Styx originally P5 (discovered 2012) official designations S/2011 (134340) 1 and  S/2012 (134340) 1).

💦PLUTO IS ONE- THIRD WATER.

💦PLUTO HAS BEEN VISITED BY ONE SPACECRAFT.

💦PLUTO SOMETIMES HAS AN ATMOSPHERE.

SO HERE IT ENDS..!!

AT LAST I WILL JUST SAY THT PLUTO WILL REMAIN IN OUR MIND AS A NINTH PLANET OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM..DO YOU AGREE?

I HOPE IT WAS A FUN READING THIS...!

DO LET ME KNOW UR VIEWS..!!!

THANKYOU!!