A friend got a text message, saying "This coming July 27, 2007, Pluto will be so close to the Earth, you can see it and it will be as large as a full moon to the naked eye. This is a very rare event, as the next occurence will be after 2287 years." Is it true?
2007-07-09 00:51:23 · 22 answers · asked by hezrongibe 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
A friend got a text message, saying "This coming July 27, 2007, Pluto will be so close to the Earth, you can see it and it will be as large as a full moon to the naked eye. This is a very rare event, as the next occurence will be after 2287 years." Is it true? (By the way, my friend only RECIEVED the text message)
2007-07-09 01:08:44 · update #1
Well, I think it may be a different version of the Mars-being-close-to-Earth message.
2007-07-09 02:42:00 · update #2
No.
Pluto will be at a range of 30.51 astronomical units or 2,837.43 million miles from Earth. It will be shinning at a magnitude 13.9 (Your eye can only see objects of magnitudes of 6 or less) The closest it's been this century was in 1990 at 2,714.67 million miles and that won't happen until 2238.
2007-07-09 00:55:44 · answer #1 · answered by ΛLΞX Q 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Someone is pulling your friend's (and your) leg.
Pluto will never get close enough to Earth to be seen with the naked eye, must less appear as large as the full moon.
The closest it can ever get to Earth is 28 AU (that's 28 times the distance of the Earth to the Sun), and even that close its still too faint to be seen without a telescope (its brightest apparent magnitude is 13.5, the dimmest star we can see with the naked eye is magnitude 6).
To be as large as a full moon, it would have to be about (and I'm guessing) maybe 125,000 km miles from Earth (Pluto is only 1195 km in diameter, about 34% the size of the moon).
So no way.
Not unless something huge disturbs Pluto's orbit, and then it would be at least a few weeks or more before we would about it, and another couple of years before it got that close.
2007-07-09 22:51:33 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
This is a load of crap my friend- pluto is so far off it's not funny. It was closer to Earth between 1979 and 1999 (in fact it was closer than neptune, which occurs for 20 years every so often). It never gets close enough to be as large as the full moon- to do that it would have to be closer than the full moon (it's smaller by a long shot). Seriously, it's furter out than jupiter. It never ets that close. I'm not sure you cane vens ee it with the naked eye.
That text message was a joke. The event it describes will never happen.
2007-07-09 08:04:45 · answer #3 · answered by Bob B 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Put simply, Pluto is smaller than Earth's moon. Therefore, in order to be seen as large as the full moon to the naked eye, it would need to be closer to the Earth than the moon. In addition, to have the Earth's shadow off the dwarf planet, Pluto would need to be "beind" Earth. That just doesn't happen. In other words, don't get any high expectations.
2007-07-15 10:30:48 · answer #4 · answered by floodfrog 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Unfdourtantly, Pluto is to far from the earth to be able to see as full as the moon with the naked eye. It is scientificly impossible for Pluto to get that close to the Earth.
2007-07-16 20:37:21 · answer #5 · answered by Chaya Ahuvah 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sorry but this is just plain wrong and incorrect. Pluto is so small and so far away that it CANNOT be seen with the naked eye. Even with powerful telescopes and only then can it be seen. Occasionally Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit and for a small time it is closer than Neptune but will NEVER be as close as what you have described.
Sorry, someone is way wrong.
2007-07-09 09:09:40 · answer #6 · answered by Apachejohn 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
No,
sorry to say your friend has been fooled . . . pluto can never be seen with the naked eye and it really never gets anywhere near the earth . . . with a good telescope and propper timing you may see pluto, but it will never shine like the moon in the sky . . . it is simply mathematically impossible
2007-07-17 05:50:26 · answer #7 · answered by KP 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
100% untrue. Pluto is in an orbit that would be never so close to the Earth.
Pluto is about 20000 times farther and is a little larger than our Moon.
2007-07-15 21:01:11 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
That's interesting. There's a well-known spam e-mail meme that says that Mars is going to be as big as the full moon next {day, month, year, etc.} but this is the first time I've heard of it morphing to be Pluto.
2007-07-09 08:11:59 · answer #9 · answered by ZikZak 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
You can see Pluto as the size of the moon on television or on your computer screen!
But no, not in the sky.
2007-07-16 21:30:24 · answer #10 · answered by Gurgler Jim 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋