why is Pluto the planet special?

Question

i need help?

Answer 1

read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto

i don't know what you mean by "special", but pluto does orbit the sun, is ball-shaped, does not have an isolated orbit (a bunch of other similar bodies have similar orbits.), and is not a satellite so it is not a planet.

i have been waiting for this since i was about ten. i knew that pluto didn't fit the pattern set by the major bodies in the solar system so it was an anomaly. it just felt "out of place". now that astronomers have found hundreds of other bodies with similar orbits, classifying "134340 pluto" as a planet is even more irrational. i feel somewhat satisfied, but i don't know how long this will drag on tho. this was the right thing to do, believe me. this does not change anything about pluto or the solar system. this just corrects the mistake of classifying pluto as a planet initially.

many astronomers consider pluto and charon to be a binary system, but two small bodies orbit that system. they are called nix and hydra.

incidentally, "134340 pluto" was never a moon of neptune. neptune did capture triton. this is why triton has a retrograde orbit.

Answer 2

Pluto is kind of small to be a planet, its smaller then our moon also I believe. One special feature is that it would be a terrestrial planet if it was still classified as a planet. That means that its more like mercury,venus,earth, mars, and our moon then the other gaseous planets. Anouther wierd thing is that it has a moonish planet that it rotates around kind of like our moon. But the wierd thing is that this moon (charon) is the same size as pluto, so the physics point that they both have the same effect on each other and make up a binary planet system. The center of this binary system would make this a huge planet :)

Answer 3

The International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto was no longer a planet. Instead, they decided to classify it as a "dwarf planet".

See the details below.

RESOLUTION 5A
The IAU therefore resolves that "planets" and other bodies in our Solar System, except satellites, be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1) A "planet" [footnote 1] is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

(2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape [footnote 2] , (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

(3) All other objects [footnote 3] except satellites orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar-System Bodies".


Footnote 1: The eight "planets" are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Footnote 2: An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either dwarf planet and other categories.

Footnote 3: These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.

RESOLUTION 6A
The IAU further resolves:

Pluto is a "dwarf planet" by the above definition and is recognized as the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects.

Answer 4

Because it is on the borderline of whether an object really should be called a planet. After much head-scratching, the IAU (which decides such things) decided that new rules needed to be adopted, and under these rules Pluto doesn't qualify as a planet -- it is too small.

Answer 5

http://www.nineplanets.org/pluto.html
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/pluto.htm

For your reading pleasure. Hope it helps.

Answer 6

its not a plant