Legends on dwarf Planet

    • Publish Date: Sep 19 2017 1:12PM
    • |
    • Updated Date: Sep 19 2017 1:15PM
Legends on dwarf Planet

A British schoolgirl who came up with the name “Pluto” for a newly-found planet in 1930 has been immortalised in the distant world by having a crater named after her. On hearing the planet’s discovery from press reports, 11-year-old Venetia Burney from Oxford proposed the name of the Roman god to her grandfather, a librarian at the city’s Bodleian library. He passed it on to the US astronomers, from where it was approved by Clyde Tombaugh, who had spotted the rocky body. The Burney crater is one of 14 Plutonian features to receive an official name from the International Astronomical Union recently. Read on to find out about others who have carved a niche for themselves on dwarf planet. 



Dwarf planet’s surface features given first official names 
In a first, two mountain ranges on the dwarf planet have been named after pioneering mountaineers who became the first to scale the Mount Everest together. 
 
Tenzing Montes and Hillary Montes are mountain ranges honouring Tenzing Norgay (1914-1986) and Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008), the Indian/Nepali Sherpa and New Zealand mountaineer who were the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest and return safely.
 
The International Astronomical Union for the first time has officially approved the naming of 14 features, including those of the pioneers,  on the dwarf planet. The names pay homage to mythology, space missions, historic pioneers who crossed new horizons in exploration, and scientists and engineers associated with Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.


Al-Idrisi Montes
Honours Ash-Sharif al-Idrisi (1100-1165/66), a noted Arab mapmaker and geographer whose landmark work of medieval geography is sometimes translated as “The Pleasure of Him Who Longs to Cross The Horizons.”

Sputnik Planitia 
A large plain named after Sputnik 1, the first space satellite launched by the Soviet Union in 1957.

Virgil Fossae
Honours Virgil, one of the greatest Roman poets and Dante’s fictional guide through hell and purgatory in the Divine Comedy.

Djangga Wul Fossae
Defines a network of long, narrow depressions named for the Djanggawuls, three ancestral beings in indigenous Australian mythology who travelled between the island of the dead and Australia, creating the landscape and filling it with vegetation. 

Voyager Terra
Honours the pair of Nasa spacecraft, launched in 1977, which performed the first ‘grand tour’ of all four giant planets. The Voyager spacecraft are now probing the boundary between the Sun and interstellar space.

Elliot Carter
Recognises James Eliiot (1943-2011), an MIT researcher who pioneered the use of stellar occultations to study the Solar System— leading to discoveries such as the rings of Uranus and Pluto’s atmosphere. 

Adlivun Cavus
A deep depression named for Adivun, the underworld in Inuit mythology.

Hayabusa Terra
A large land mass saluting the Japanese spacecraft and mission (2003-2010) that returned the first astroid sample.

Sleipnir Fossa
After the eight-legged horse of Norse mythology that carried the god Odin into the underworld.

Burney Crater
After Venetia Burney who, at age 11, suggested the name Pluto, Burney later taught Maths and Economics. Source: Agencies/ NASA

Tartarus Dorsa
A ridge named for Tartarus, the deepist pit of the underworld in Greek mythology. In Roman mythology, Tartarus is the place where sinners are sent. Virgil describes it in the Aeneid as a place, surrounded by the flaming river and triple walls to prevent sinners from escaping from it.


Pluto is one of the most mysterious and controversial celestial objects in the solar system. Find out what most mystifies scientists and stargazers about this dwarf planet


What Is Pluto?
  • Pluto is a dwarf planet. A dwarf planet travels around, or orbits, the sun just like other planets. But it is much smaller.
  • Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. He was an astronomer from the United States. Venetia Burney named Pluto that same year. She was an 11-year-old girl from England.
  • Pluto is not very big. It is only half as wide as the United States. Pluto is smaller than Earth's moon. This dwarf planet takes 248 Earth years to go around the sun. If you lived on Pluto, you would have to wait 248 Earth years to celebrate your first birthday. One day on Pluto is about 6 1/2 days on Earth.
  • Pluto is about 40 times farther from the sun than Earth. Pluto is in an area of space called the Kuiper Belt. Thousands of small, icy objects like Pluto but smaller are in the Kuiper Belt.
  • This dwarf planet has five moons. Its largest moon is named Charon. Charon is about half the size of Pluto. Pluto's four other moons are named Kerberos, Styx, Nix and Hydra.

How Is NASA Exploring Pluto Today?
  • NASA learns about Pluto from pictures taken with telescopes. Pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope helped scientists find the four smaller moons. The Hubble telescope is very powerful. But Pluto is so far away that even pictures taken by Hubble are fuzzy.
  • NASA decided to send a spacecraft to fly close to Pluto. The spacecraft’s name is New Horizons. It is only about the size of a piano. New Horizons launched in January 2006. In summer 2015, New Horizons flew by Pluto and its moons. It took almost 10 years to travel that far from Earth!
  • New Horizons has cameras that took pictures of Pluto. As the spacecraft flew by, the science tools on board gathered information.
  • Scientists found out more about Pluto’s smaller moons too. They learned that Pluto's moons spin faster than other moons. The moon Hydra spins 89 times for each time it orbits Pluto! And the moons wobble like spinning tops! New Horizons is studying more of the Kuiper Belt now that the spacecraft has finished its mission studying Pluto.

What Is Pluto Like?
  • Pluto is very, very cold. It is much colder than Antarctica. It is so cold that Earth’s air would freeze into a kind of snow there. Pluto has less gravity than Earth. This means a person would weigh much less on Pluto than on Earth.
 
 
 

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Comments

R.Lokeshwaran Bethel Mat Hr Sec School

Wow this is an interesting article to read and it''s very useful and informative

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