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Pluto has a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit, ranging from 30 to 49 astronomical units (4.5 to 7.3 billion kilometres; 2.8 to 4.6 billion miles) from the Sun. Light from the Sun takes 5.5 hours to reach Pluto at its orbital distance of 39.5 AU (5.91 billion km; 3.67 billion mi).
One particularly distant body is 90377 Sedna, which was discovered in November 2003.It has an extremely eccentric orbit that takes it to an aphelion of 937 AU. [2] It takes over 10,000 years to orbit, and during the next 50 years it will slowly move closer to the Sun as it comes to perihelion at a distance of 76 AU from the Sun. [3] Sedna is the largest known sednoid, a class of objects that ...
Like Pluto, its orbit is highly eccentric, with a perihelion of 38.2 AU (roughly Pluto's distance from the Sun) and an aphelion of 97.6 AU, and steeply inclined to the ecliptic plane at an angle of 44°. [220] Gonggong (33.8–101.2 AU) is a dwarf planet in a comparable orbit to Eris, except that it is in a 3:10 resonance with Neptune.
Inversely, for calculating the distance where a body has to orbit in order to have a given orbital period T: a = G M T 2 4 π 2 3 {\displaystyle a={\sqrt[{3}]{\frac {GMT^{2}}{4\pi ^{2}}}}} For instance, for completing an orbit every 24 hours around a mass of 100 kg , a small body has to orbit at a distance of 1.08 meters from the central body's ...
A spacecraft traveling from Earth to Mars via this method will arrive near Mars orbit in approximately 8.5 months, but because the orbital velocity is greater when closer to the center of mass (i.e. the Sun) and slower when farther from the center, the spacecraft will be traveling quite slowly and a small application of thrust is all that is ...
Pluto belongs to a group of objects that distantly orbit the sun called the Kuiper Belt, where thousands of icy remnants left over from the formation of the solar system linger. Eight of the 10 ...
1 astronomical unit (au); mean distance between Earth and Sun 10 12: 1 terameter (Tm) 1.3 Tm Optical diameter of Betelgeuse: 1.4 Tm Orbital distance of Saturn from Sun 2 Tm Estimated optical diameter of VY Canis Majoris, one of the largest-known stars: 5.9 Tm Orbital distance of Pluto from the Sun ~ 7.5 Tm Outer boundary of the Kuiper belt: 10 ...
This can only occur at two points in Pluto's orbit; coincidentally, these points are near Pluto's perihelion and aphelion. Occultations occur when Pluto passes in front of and blocks one of Pluto's satellites. Charon has an angular diameter of 4 degrees of arc as seen from the surface of Pluto; the Sun appears much smaller, only 39 to 65 ...