Pluto
Mythology
Pluto was discovered completely by accident when Clyde Tombaugh was looking for a planet to explain irregularities in Neptune’s orbit in 1930. As it turns out, Pluto could not have done anything to Neptune, just like Neptune can’t affect Uranus. Pluto is the smallest planet with a radius of only 2,300 km (.18 Earth diameters) and it is also the farthest away at 5,914 million km (39.5 AU) from the sun. Pluto was named after the god of the underworld, and Charon, its moon, was named after the boatmen over the river Styx. Facts
Not much is known about Pluto. It has an extremely slow day and year. A day on Pluto is equivalent to 6 days here, and a year is about 249 of our years!
Viewing Pluto
Trying to find Pluto isn’t recommended. However, if you really must, your best bet will be with an observatory and a camera, or better yet, a space telescope. Use the telescope to take a couple of pictures of the area around Pluto and look for a faint star that moves. That’s Pluto and it’s moon, Charon. Pluto only has one moon, and these two small bodies actually orbit each other. Charon is just a little bit smaller than Pluto, which almost makes them a double planet system.
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