Pluto is one of the nearest planets to the sun. This is an attribute of the said planet, despite of being a dwarf. This is how it has been called for quite some time now. This started in the year 1930 during its year of discovery. In 2006, studies were still conducted for it. From there, it was dubbed as the 9th planet in the whole solar system. Well, this is one of the common interesting facts about Pluto. As said, it is known as a dwarf planet. It places second, with Eris being the first. The latter is considered the massive dwarf planet.
Just recently, on July 14, 2015 to be exact, it was the New Horizons mission which did a flyby to Pluto. This was undertaken so that high resolution photographs may be captured. This was also a way to find data about Pluto and other worlds there are.
Other information about Pluto
The ninth planet in the solar system comes with five moons. These are well known. Of course, they have their own distance from Pluto. In order, these are Charon, the most enormous in the moons which is locked with the given planet, followed by Styx, Nix, Kerberos and the farthest is Hydra.
As said, Charon is really large. As a matter of fact, there are instances when Pluto is perceived as two objects, or a double dwarf because of the Charon.
Discovering Pluto
On February 18, 1930, Pluto was discovered. This was initiated by Clyde Tombaugh who was from Lowell Observatory. It took 76 years prior to its discovery, and then its reclassification. It was called dwarf planet right away. This was the time when every noticed that the planet took one third of orbit just around the sun itself.
The year 2006 was important for Pluto because of the given reclassification. This took place right after formalization of its definition by the IAU. With that, it was given its name based on the underworld Roman god. Pluto was the alternative name for Hades. This said name was given as a proposal by then an eleven year-old pupil who came from Oxford, England. She was Venetia Burney.
The orbit of Pluto around the sun takes 246.04 years on Earth. Being the dwarf that it is, Pluto is even way smaller compared to other moons out there. During its first discovery, the size of Pluto surprised and shocked the entire scientific community. This transpired because the realization from their belief that the planet would be comparable to that of Jupiter in terms of size. Well, it turned out to be really small that it is even larger than the moon of the earth, and other sort of moons such as Callisto, Ganymede, Trion, lo, and as well as Europa.
As for the sunlight of Pluto, it resembles the moonlight on earth. This is the case because of its location from the sun.
These are the facts related to Pluto.