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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).
Pluto does have a thin but significant atmosphere, and under some conditions [which?] Charon's gravitation may pull some of Pluto's upper atmosphere, specifically nitrogen, from Pluto's ice formations, toward Charon's surface. The nitrogen is mostly caught in the combined center of gravity between the two bodies before reaching Charon, but any ...
Observations of stellar occultations by Pluto show that it increased about 3 times between 1988 and 2015, even though Pluto has been moving away from the Sun since 1989. [ 39 ] [ 11 ] [ 38 ] [ 40 ] This is probably caused by Pluto's north pole coming into sunlight in 1987, which intensified evaporation of nitrogen from the northern hemisphere ...
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 ...
For the giant planets, the "radius" is defined as the distance from the center at which the atmosphere reaches 1 bar of atmospheric pressure. [ 11 ] Because Sedna and 2002 MS 4 have no known moons, directly determining their mass is impossible without sending a probe (estimated to be from 1.7x10 21 to 6.1×10 21 kg for Sedna [ 12 ] ).
However, some other models do show this. Pluto needs 248 years for one complete orbit, and has been observed for less than one third of that time. It has an average distance of 39 AU from the Sun, hence in-depth data from Pluto is sparse and difficult to gather. Temperature is inferred indirectly for Pluto; when it passes in front of a star ...
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The heart is about 1,590 km (990 mi) across. The region contains two 3,400 m (11,000 ft) peaks composed of water-ice along its southwestern edge, Hillary Montes and Tenzing Montes. The lack of craters in the region suggests that its surface is less than 100 million years old, hence the speculation that Pluto is probably geologically active. [8]