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Space & Planets
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Pluto
Source: NASA true color photograph Pluto is a very strange planet indeed. It was discovered in 1930 by American astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Ever since its discovery, it has remained a mysterious place. Its orbit takes it out further from the sun than any other known planet although it is not always the farthermost of the planets. The outer planets are all gas giants, except for pluto, which is a small world that seems to be made up of ice and rock. Its moon Charon orbits it. It was thought for a while that Pluto was a moon of Neptune that had some how broken out of orbit. Most astronomers don't believe this anymore since it has its own moon orbiting it. Over the years a couple of astronomers thought they discovered a planet more distant from the sun than Pluto. The last one that I know about, that was sighted, was determined to be a ice chunk that was about 800 miles in diameter and swings around the sun at a distance of a billion miles. When it was determined that this was an ice world some astronomers expressed doubts that Pluto was a planet. Now you can get two different opinions on Pluto's planetary status. As Pluto is receding from the sun and going out further into space it was noticed that its atmosphere is thickening. This has many people puzzled. The atmosphere of Pluto is thicker now than it was 14 years ago. It has been 14 years since it passed in front of two stars so its atmosphere could be measured by their light passing through its atmosphere. The explanation for this event might turn out to be something quite simple but as of this moment it seems to be very baffling. No one even knew that Pluto had an atmosphere until 1985, when it was detected using the method stated above. Could it be that some sort of chemical reaction is caused by some unknown factor which releases frozen gases into the planet's atmosphere? There are objects that are in an area called the Kuiper Belt. A Dutch astronomer named Jan Oort theorized in 1950, that an area of space existed that was about 50,000 times further out than the Earth is from the Sun, which contained bodies of ice.
Kuiper Belt Objects The problem arises that if objects are discovered that are the size of Pluto or larger, than it would seem to support the theory that Pluto is a Kuiper Belt Object and not a planet. Well at this point though we can't be sure as mentioned previously. Another point is that more objects even further out could exist. I am not clear on what is the furthest point a planet could orbit our sun. An astronomer, Dr John Murray of the UK's Open University, believes that there is a giant planet out as far as three thousand billion miles and this planet is several times the size of Jupiter. He states that his studies have indicated that this planet is responsible for comets being bumped into orbits.
Mission to Pluto NASA has decided that it will conduct a mission to the Planet Pluto. It is scheduled to launch in January of 2006 and will arrive at Pluto in the middle of 2015. The money for the mission has been taken away twice but restored by congress. The name of the mission is New Horizons. Notice I said Planet Pluto, because until Pluto is officially deplanetized (A word I coined) I will continue to call it such. The probe will image the planet, examining it using cameras and various other scientific instruments. The estimated cost for the mission is slightly under 500 million dollars which means that this mission will save NASA 150 million dollars because 650 million is automatically budgeted for this type of mission. So lets keep our fingers crossed and hope that the mission gets off the ground and with these types of missions you never know what might be found out there. We are going very far out and the further we go, the more we get into uncharted territory. It is amazing, even though we haven't landed humans on any planet in our solar system, some people feel that some of these missions are getting to be old hat. If you listen carefully you can hear that "oh not more pictures of Mars again" cry. I don't feel that way and I know many of you don't, but I also know that until we start landing people in these places, some people are actually getting bored with the whole thing. I personally look forward to new pictures of the planets, and especially of the Cydonia Region of Mars. As you might already know, that is where the supposed face, ruins and pyramids are located. Let get on with the exploration! |
