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Galaxiki Community BlogSubscribe via RSS Pluto - Biography Of An Ex-PlanetMarch 11, 2008by joskirps Pluto is the second-largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System. Originally Pluto was classified as the ninth planet in our Solar System, but since 2006 it is now considered to be a member of the so-called "Kuiper belt" region. In the late 19th century astronomers speculated that Uranus'orbit was being disturbed by another planet. In 1905, Observatory owner Percival Lowell started an extensive project in search of a possible ninth planet, which he termed " Planet X ". He conducted his search until his death in 1916, without finding anything.  Planet X was finally discovered in early 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, a 22-year-old Kansas farm boy who had then only just arrived at the Lowell Observatory. The name Pluto was first suggested by Venetia Burney, an eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England. The name proposals "Minerva" and "Cronus" had been rejected. The young girl got five pounds as a reward. The Disney character Pluto was introduced the same year and it was named in honour of the new planet.In 1978, the discovery of Pluto's moon Charon allowed the measurement of Pluto's mass for the first time - and it was much lower as expected before. Pluto and Charon are even often treated together as a binary system (binary dwarf planets) because the barycentre of their orbits does not lie within either body. Two further Pluto moons were discovered in 2005, they're called Nix and Hydra. Pluto's surface is composed of more than 98 percent nitrogen ice, with traces of methane and carbon monoxide. A radioactive decay heating may even have created a subsurface ocean of liquid water on Pluto. It is not known if such a subsurface ocean would allow primitive life form to appear. Beginning in 1992, astronomers began to discover many small icy objects that were very similar to Pluto, this region was then named the "Kuiper belt" and it's believed to be the source of many short-period comets. Pluto now seems to be one of many other smaller objects within this belt, and astronomers even found "Eris", an object larger than Pluto, within this belt. In 2006 the IAU created an official definition for the term "planet", as Pluto fails one of them it finally lost its status as a planet and now belongs to the (newly created) dwarf planet category. No spacecraft ever visited Pluto yet, and there's no photography showing any surface details, which is mostly due to the great distance from Earth. On January 19, 2006, a first Pluto spacecraft was launched - it's called "New Horizons", it will reach Pluto in July 2015 and it has some of Clyde Tombaugh's ashes on board.
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