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Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris.
JPL Horizons computes an aphelion around the year 2005 at about 133 AU, [11] whereas Project Pluto computes aphelion around the year 1976 slightly further out at 134 AU. [12] Its perihelion is a little less than that of Neptune .
An object with an e of between 0 and 1 will have an elliptical orbit, with, for instance, an object with an e of 0.5 having a perihelion twice as close to the Sun as its aphelion. As an object's e approaches 1, its orbit will be more and more elongated before, and at e =1, the object's orbit will be parabolic and unbound to the Solar System (i ...
The comet's perihelion is just under that of Earth, while its aphelion is just over that of Pluto. An unusual aspect of its orbit is that it was recently captured into a 1:11 orbital resonance with Jupiter; it completes one orbit for every 11 of Jupiter. [8] It was the first comet in a retrograde orbit to be found in a resonance. [8]
Centaurs have unstable orbits in which the perihelion (q) is well inside of Neptune's orbit but the farthest point (aphelion, Q) is very distant. The first TNO to be discovered was Pluto in 1930. It became the namesake of a larger group of resonant objects called plutinos (another such resonant subgroup are the twotinos).
Log-log plot of period T vs semi-major axis a (average of aphelion and perihelion) of some Solar System orbits (crosses denoting Kepler's values) showing that a 3 / T 2 is constant (green line) In astrodynamics the orbital period T of a small body orbiting a central body in a circular or elliptical orbit is: [1]
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 ...
Historically, the astronomical unit was conceived as the average Earth-Sun distance (the average of Earth's aphelion and perihelion), before its modern redefinition in 2012. The astronomical unit is used primarily for measuring distances within the Solar System or around other stars.