Now That Pluto is No Longer a Planet is Charon Still a Moon?

Pluto had been a member of our immediate neighboring planets for more than seven decades since its discovery, but on August 24th, 2006, the contemplative celestial body was deprived of its status as an official planet, and thus our planetary system.

Finally lost its ninth and outermost representative. But what were the circumstances that led the experts to take this drastic step? Research on NASA

Pluto-Dimensions and Characteristics:

Many schoolchildren learned the individual representatives of our galactic home using the saying that refers to the initial letters of our solar system's planets.

Credit to NASA/JPL-Caltech

The fact that the object in the remote Kuiper belt already differed significantly from its galactic neighbors during the era of its official planetary membership becomes clear when we look at the dimensions and characteristics of t is also characterized by bone-chillingly cold surface temperatures. It never gets warmer than negative 360 degrees Fahrenheit.

As stated at the outset of this article, we have known about Pluto's existence since the beginning of 1930. However, the actual position of the celestial body didn't match its previously predicted location after the galactic discovery became known among the experts.

The world public finally learned on March 13th, 1930 that our planetary system was a member richer. Since the 70s, we have known that the celestial body does not pull its course alone through the universe on its cosmic journey.

Pluto is accompanied, among other things, by the moon. Charon This natural satellite has an equatorial diameter of more than 745 miles, making Charon more than half the size of Pluto itself. These extraordinary size ratios cause heated debates within the scientific community again and again.

While experts still discuss whether the two celestial bodies should be awarded the status of a double planet, meanwhile, it's also known that Cheron is not the only moon of Pluto.

The small celestial body enjoys the company of at least five other satellites compared to Charon. However, the dimensions of the pluto satellites discovered so far are significantly smaller. The smallest known pluto satellite has an intrinsic diameter of just six miles.

What is a planet, anyway?

The debate over whether Pluto should remain an official member of our planetary system began as soon as experts recognized the celestial body's small size and highly inclined orbit. The true size of Pluto was hopelessly overestimated at first. In the early 1990s, several more celestial bodies were discovered in the Kuiper belt, followed by hundreds more objects in the years that followed.

Brief survey of history shows that this terminology has already been subjected to some drastic fluctuations for the centuries at that time when humans still possessed a geocentric worldview, where the earth represented the center of the universe around which all remaining celestial bodies rotated.

Kuiper belt objectsCredit to https://bbc.com/

All objects in the sky that could be recognized with the naked eye and moved in the firmament were designated as planets. Therefore, at that time, both the moon and the sun possessed the official status of a planet when the heliocentric view of the world took precedence.

As a result, our planetary system had only 12 recognized members during the 19th century, as more celestial bodies were discovered between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, all of which were significantly smaller than the classical planets.

Over time, as more celestial bodies were discovered between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, all of which were significantly smaller than the classical planets, the definition of planetary status was reconsidered, and researchers agreed to include only the planets known since ancient times, plus Uranus and Next

Why Pluto Isn't a Planet Anymore:

In light of the nature and characteristics of Pluto and the countless other objects discovered in the Kuiper belt, the International Astronomical Union finally agreed on a new definition of planetary status in the summer of 2006. As a result, some uniform criteria were fixed that a celestial body must fulfill to be considered a planet. On the one hand, the corresponding object must move in its orbit around the sun.

Last but not least, the planet definition stipulates that the celestial body must be the dominant object within its orbit. In simple terms, this means that the planet must have its rotational orbit virtually cleared of other entities by the force of its gravitational field. This last point finally sealed the end of Pluto's planetary status.

The requirement that Pluto be the dominant entity in the region of its orbit simply does not exist. Therefore, in light of this drastic redefinition, the question arose as to how Pluto and objects of comparable size and properties should be classified in the future.

The first proposal was to introduce the class of so-called plutons. This would ultimately include those celestial bodies that take more than 200 years to orbit their star. However, this idea did not find enough supporters at the general assembly of the International Astronomical Union.

Instead, the leading experts decided to include the group of dwarf planets, which since then has included Pluto.

To be included in this class of solar system celestial bodies, a candidate must meet the same requirements as planets, with the basic exception that the entity must not have cleared its orbit of other objects within its solar system other galactic entities such as asteroids and comets are included in the group of small bodies.

Plutooids, in turn, represents a distinct subclass of dwarf planets. The rotation orbit of these celestial bodies is outside the orbit of Neptune, so they belong to the trans-Neptunian objects.

Currently, the solar system counts five officially recognized dwarf planets besides Pluto. Ceres is the only dwarf planet in the asteroid belt Iris, which is only insignificantly smaller than Pluto.