Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The semi-major axis of Pluto's orbit varies between about 39.3 and 39.6 AU with a period of about 19,951 years, corresponding to an orbital period varying between 246 and 249 years. The semi-major axis and period are presently getting longer.
Pluto's four small circumbinary moons orbit Pluto at two to four times the distance of Charon, ranging from Styx at 42,700 kilometres to Hydra at 64,800 kilometres from the barycenter of the system. They have nearly circular prograde orbits in the same orbital plane as Charon. All are much smaller than Charon.
The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy , it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun , moons orbiting planets, exoplanets orbiting other stars , or binary stars .
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 ...
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.
Doubts about Charon's existence were erased when it and Pluto entered a five-year period of mutual eclipses and transits between 1985 and 1990. This occurs when the Pluto–Charon orbital plane is edge-on as seen from Earth, which only happens at two intervals in Pluto's 248-year orbital period. It was fortuitous that one of these intervals ...
The distance between Charon and Pluto is about 12,200 miles (19,640 km), compared to the 238,855 miles (384,400 km) on average separating Earth from its moon.
All of Pluto's moons including Kerberos have very circular orbits with very low orbital inclinations to Pluto's equator. Kerberos orbits between Nix and Hydra and makes a complete orbit around Pluto roughly every 32.167 days. [1] [16] Its orbital period is close to a 1:5 orbital resonance with Charon, [21] with the timing discrepancy being ...