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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).
New Horizons encounters Pluto at a distance of 4.7 billion kilometres, and the communication takes 4 hours 25 minutes to reach Earth. 10 −3: 2.04 × 10 −3 ly: The most distant space probe, Voyager 1, was about 18 light-hours (130 au,19.4 billion km, 12.1 billion mi) away from the Earth as of October 2014. [29]
This is because the distance between Earth and the Sun is not fixed (it varies between 0.983 289 8912 and 1.016 710 3335 au) and, when Earth is closer to the Sun , the Sun's gravitational field is stronger and Earth is moving faster along its orbital path. As the metre is defined in terms of the second and the speed of light is constant for all ...
4.4 Tm – 29.4 au – perihelion distance of Pluto; 4.5 Tm – 30.1 au – average distance between Neptune and the Sun; 4.5 Tm – 30.1 au – inner radius of the Kuiper belt; 5.7 Tm – 38.1 au – perihelion distance of Eris; 6.0 Tm – 40.5 au – distance from Earth at which the Pale Blue Dot photograph was taken.
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A light-minute is 60 light-seconds, and so the average distance between Earth and the Sun is 8.317 light-minutes. The average distance between Pluto and the Sun (34.72 AU [5]) is 4.81 light-hours. [6] Humanity's most distant artificial object, Voyager 1, has an interstellar velocity of 3.57 AU per year, [7] or 29.7 light-minutes per year. [8]
How could an exoplanet so far away be causing such a hubbub? Pluto's movement in Aquarius certainly is, at least in the astrological world. Faraway Pluto moves back into Aquarius, again, Jan. 20 ...
Pluto likely acquired large moon Charon in a “kiss and capture” collision billions of years ago. It may have created a subsurface ocean on the icy dwarf planet.