How does pluto rotate

And the previous time it happened was back in the s. As you probably know, Pluto is no longer a planet. This was a decision handed down in the meeting of the International Astronomical Union. Pluto is in a resonance with Neptune. This means that for every three orbits Neptune makes going around the Sun, Pluto makes two.

They always end up in the same positions. This whole process takes about years to complete. Earth, in comparison, has 1. We have written many interesting articles about Pluto here at Universe Today. Also, Pluto travels around the Sun in a very elliptical orbit. At its closest point, or perihelion, Pluto gets as close as 4. At its most distant point, or aphelion, Pluto is 7. One interesting note is that Pluto and Charon are a binary planet system, and the two worlds are in orbit around each other.

This means that Charon takes 6 days and 9 hours to orbit around Pluto — the same amount of time it takes for a day on Pluto. This means that Charon is always at the same place in the sky when seen from Pluto. You would have the same view from Charon as well. You can read more about these images here on Universe Today, and here on the New Horizons website. Still, in the time that it does have an atmosphere, Pluto can apparently experience strong winds.

The atmosphere also has brightness variations that could be explained by gravity waves, or air flowing over mountains. While Pluto's atmosphere is too thin to allow liquids to flow today, they may have streamed along the surface in the ancient past. New Horizons imaged a frozen lake in Tombaugh Regio that appeared to have ancient channels nearby.

At some point in the ancient past, the planet could have had an atmosphere roughly 40 times thicker than on Mars. In , scientists announced that they might have spotted clouds in Pluto's atmosphere using New Horizons data.

Investigators saw seven bright features that are near the terminator the boundary between daylight and darkness , which is commonly where clouds form. The features are all low in altitude and roughly about the same size, indicating that these are separate features.

The composition of these clouds, if they are indeed clouds, would likely be acetylene, ethane and hydrogen cyanide.

Pluto's rotation is retrograde compared to the solar systems' other worlds; it spins backward, from east to west. Average distance from the sun : 3,,, miles 5,,, km — Perihelion closest approach to the sun : 2,,, miles 4,,, km — Aphelion farthest distance from the sun : 4,,, miles 7,,, km — In , astronomers discovered that Pluto had a very large moon nearly half the dwarf planet's own size.

This moon was dubbed Charon, after the mythological demon who ferried souls to the underworld in Greek mythology. Because Charon and Pluto are so similar in size, their orbit is unlike that of most planets and their moons. Both Pluto and Charon orbit a point in space that lies between them, similar to the orbits of binary star systems , For this reason, scientists refer to Pluto and Charon as a double dwarf planet, double planet or binary system. Pluto and Charon are just 12, miles 19, km apart, less than the distance by flight between London and Sydney.

Charon's orbit around Pluto takes 6. This is because Charon hovers over the same spot on Pluto's surface, and the same side of Charon always faces Pluto, a phenomenon known as tidal locking.

While Pluto has a reddish tint, Charon appears more grayish. In its early days, the moon may have contained a subsurface ocean, though the satellite probably can't support one today. Compared with most of the solar system's planets and moons, the Pluto-Charon system is tipped on its side in relation to the sun. Observations of Charon by New Horizons have revealed the presence of canyons on the moon's surface.

The deepest of those canyons plunges downward for 6 miles 9. A long swatch of cliffs and troughs stretches for miles km across the middle of the satellite. A section of the moon's surface near one pole is covered in a much darker material than the rest of the planet. Similar to regions of Pluto, much of Charon's surface is free of craters — suggesting the surface is quite young and geologically active.

Scientists saw evidence of landslides on its surface, the first time such features have been spotted in the Kuiper Belt. The moon may have also possessed its own version of plate tectonics, which cause geologic change on Earth.

In , scientists photographed Pluto with the Hubble Space Telescope in preparation for the New Horizons mission and discovered two other tiny moons of Pluto, now dubbed Nix and Hydra.