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Pluto's origin and identity had long puzzled astronomers. One early hypothesis was that Pluto was an escaped moon of Neptune [161] knocked out of orbit by Neptune's largest moon, Triton. This idea was eventually rejected after dynamical studies showed it to be impossible because Pluto never approaches Neptune in its orbit. [162]
A binary resonance ratio in this article should be interpreted as the ratio of number of orbits completed in the same time interval, rather than as the ratio of orbital periods, which would be the inverse ratio. Thus, the 2:3 ratio above means that Pluto completes two orbits in the time it takes Neptune to complete three.
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It was used to integrate out to 845 million years – some 20% of the age of the Solar System. In 1988, Sussman and Wisdom found data using the Orrery that revealed that Pluto's orbit shows signs of chaos, due in part to its peculiar resonance with Neptune. [9] If Pluto's orbit is chaotic, then technically the whole Solar System is chaotic.
A quasi-satellite's orbit around the Sun takes the same time as the planet's, but has a different eccentricity (usually greater), as shown in the diagram. When viewed from the perspective of the planet by an observer facing the Sun, the quasi-satellite will appear to travel in an oblong retrograde loop around the planet.
A total of five planets are going retrograde between May and September: Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. "Retrograde" is a term used to describe when a planet's orbit appears to slow.
Like Pluto, this plutino spends part of its orbit closer to the Sun than Neptune. Like all resonant trans-Neptunian objects its orbit is dominated by Neptune. Simulations by the Deep Ecliptic Survey (DES) show that over the next 10 million years 1996 TP 66 can acquire a perihelion distance ( q min ) as small as 25.9 AU. [ 3 ]
Pluto's reign. For decades, students learned the phrase "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" to remember the order of the planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars ...