An 11-year-old girl proposed the name of Pluto after the Roman God of the Underworld.
100 Mind-Blowing Pluto Facts
There are times when Pluto is closer to the Sun than Neptune – one of these timelines was from 1979 to 1999.
Pluto was temporarily closer to the sun than Neptune. NASA recorded this instance during the years between 1979 to 1999. However, this was not the only time in history for a phenomenon like this to occur.
The planet was named Pluto thanks to an 11-year-old girl. She named the planet after the Roman God of the underworld because the planet was found to be frozen and lonely. Previously to this, the planet was referred to as planet X. This little girl lived till the age of 90 and died in April 2009.
Pluto is smaller than the U.S.
The inventor of the Frisbee became one after he died. After Walter Morrison died and was cremated in 2010, his family turned him into the very toy he invented in 1955. It was known as the Pluto Platter before Wham-O renamed it the Frisbee.
Neptune has only completed one orbit around the Sun since its discovery. This is one of our favourite facts about space, and perhaps the most memorable (if you want to impress your friends next time you’re sharing cool facts. Neptune takes a whopping 165 years to complete one full orbit around the Sun. Since it was discovered in 1846, Neptune only finished its first full post-discovery orbit in 2011. Demoted planet Pluto has yet to match this – it is not even close to completing one full, 248-year orbit since its discovery in 1930.
Even in an aeroplane, a trip to Pluto would take about 800 years.
If you could fly a plane to Pluto, the trip would take more than 800 years!
The dark region on the north pole of Pluto’s moon, Charon, is called Mordor. In July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft became the first spacecraft to fly past Pluto, the formerly ninth planet in our solar system. NASA called on the general public to aid them in giving names to the many new features of Pluto they expected to find, and the general public certainly didn’t disappoint. Not only did they name a dark spot on Charon’s moon after Sauron’s holdout in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, but they also named a dark spot on Pluto’s south pole Cthulu from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu Mythos!
Extraterrestrial prize. The (dwarf) planet Pluto was named by an 11-year-old schoolgirl who won the naming competition.