What the Mysterious Extraterrestrial World of Pluto Looks Like | Space Documentary

🌍 Pluto, one of the most controversial objects in the solar system, a tiny cold celestial body located 40 times farther from the Sun than the Earth, remained completely unexplored for a long time. This distant and mysterious world was long considered the ninth planet of the solar system, until the International Astronomical Union established new criteria for the concept of "planet" and deprived this celestial body of the right to be called "planet" and transferred it to the category of dwarf planets, like a small body of the solar system.
But why is Pluto no longer the ninth planet of the solar system?
Although Pluto is no longer considered a major planet, it is of great interest to the international astronomical community. With the knowledge of Pluto's existence, major explorations have led to the discovery of several trans-Neptunian objects, comparable in size and mass to Pluto.


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💥 What does Pluto look like? :
- Pluto's dimensions have been measured at less than 3 kilometers. The diameter of the planet is 2376 km. This is far less than the diameter of any planet in the solar system, including Mercury, and significantly less than the diameter of our moon!
Pluto is more than 5 times smaller than the Earth.
As early as the beginning of the 20th century, astronomers had predicted that a stellar object beyond Neptune, with a mass greater than that of the Earth, was present. When Pluto was discovered, it turned out to be too tiny to have such an influence. Between 1930 and 1978, the estimate of Pluto's mass gradually decreased from 1 Earth mass to 1/10th of the mass of our planet.
However, in 1978, the discovery of Charon, Pluto's moon, immediately allowed the mass of the dwarf planet to be accurately determined. It turned out that Pluto is more than 5 times lighter than our Moon and is five hundredths the mass of Earth!
The volume of the dwarf planet is almost 7 billion cubic kilometers. This is about 152 times smaller than the volume of our planet. This means that up to 152 Pluto could fit inside the Earth!
If we divide the mass of a planet by its volume, we get the average density. The average density can indicate the composition of the planet. For example, the density of Mercury and the Earth is greater than 5 g per cm³. This suggests that the composition of these planets is dominated by metals and rocks. The density of Jupiter and Saturn is only about 1 g per cm³ because they are gaseous planets.
The average density of Pluto is 1.88 g per cm³. This is an intermediate value between gas planets like Jupiter and rocky planets like Earth. Various ices play an important role in the composition of Pluto. Chemically, Pluto seems to be composed of 70% basaltic rocks and 30% water.

Pluto moves around the Sun in an orbit that is different from the orbits of the major planets in the solar system. All the major planets orbit the Sun on approximately the same plane, which is the ecliptic plane, and Pluto's orbit is tilted toward it by 17 degrees. In addition, Pluto's orbit is elongated, more like an oval than a circle.
Due to the elongation of the very elliptical orbit, Pluto moves away from the Sun up to 49 astronomical units, and then gets closer at a distance of 30 AU. It should be remembered that an astronomical unit is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun, about 150 million km.



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🎬 On the agenda today:
- 00:00 - Introduction
- 02:33 - General information about Pluto
- 02:58 - Physical characteristics of Pluto
- 04:58 - Pluto's orbit and rotation
- 07:51 - Pluto's magnetic field
- 08:17 - History of discovery of Pluto
- 14:02 - Exploration missions
- 17:00 - Why is Pluto not a planet?
- 23:35 - Origin and place of Pluto in the solar system
- 25:51 - What color is the dwarf planet Pluto?
- 27:57 - What does the surface of Pluto look like?
- 32:57 - Strange internal structure of Pluto...
- 36:39 - Pluto's Atmosphere
- 45:32 - Climate of Pluto
- 47:46 - Pluto's moons
- 48:25 - Charon: the largest moon
- 55:14 - The other four moons
- 56:50 - Do rings exist around Pluto?
- 58:47 - Is it possible, one day, that Pluto and Neptune collide?
- 01:04:27 - What future for Pluto?