Discover the Cosmos: Top 14 Fun and Fascinating Facts about Pluto

1. Pluto's Icy Heart Thermostat

While Cupid clearly shot an arrow through Pluto's icy heart to form its charming Tombaugh Regio: This heart-shaped feature is actually an enormous deposit of frozen nitrogen that acts as a peculiar thermostat, causing atmospheric circulation to move in a retro-rotation - the opposite direction of the dwarf planet's spin, generating intense winds that create a nitrogen cycle and shape Pluto's surface in delightful dark streaks and plains.
Source => earthsky.org

2. Interplanetary Tango: Pluto and Charon

In an interplanetary tango worthy of a reality TV show, Pluto and Charon dance around a starry stage, twirling with grace and gravitational pull: The duo actually orbits around a common barycenter, a point in space located outside of both bodies, creating the appearance of a celestial pas de deux. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured their performance in 2015, shedding light on these cosmic contestants and their four smaller backup dancers – Pluto's other moons.
Source => skyandtelescope.org

Discover the celestial heavyweight Eris, a dwarf planet that stole Pluto's planetary crown by being 27% heavier! Learn about its slow 559.07-year orbit and the chaos it caused in the astronomy world. 🌌💪🔭

=> Fun Facts about Dwarf-Planets

3. Relationship Goals: Pluto and Charon's Barycenter

Forget couples' therapy, Pluto and Charon take relationship goals to a whole new level: The dynamic duo's largest moon is nearly half the size of Pluto itself, and they're in such sync that they're considered a double dwarf planet with their center of mass, the barycenter, floating 960 km above Pluto's surface to keep things balanced. Talk about making compromises!
Source => en.wikipedia.org

4. Pluto's Atmospheric Disappearing Act

Lean in close, because Pluto's icy cold secrets are here to break the ice at your next cosmic cocktail party: This little dwarf planet's atmosphere is made up mostly of nitrogen, with the vapor pressure from surface ices keeping it afloat, but as it drifts away from the Sun, these ices cool and freeze, causing the atmosphere to shrink and turn back into ice – a stunning disappearing act confirmed by a stellar occultation in 2018!
Source => sci.news

5. Celestial Power Couple: Pluto and Charon

Move over, Brangelina: Pluto and Charon are the true celestial power couple worthy of a space star on the Walk of Fame. This dynamic duo's unique pairing puts Hollywood's finest to shame: Charon is a whopping half the size of Pluto, making it the largest moon-to-planet ratio in our entire solar system, and creating a binary planet partnership rather than a conventional moon situation.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

6. Charon: Ferryman of the Cosmos

Hold on to your paddles and prepare to cross the cosmic river: Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is named after the mythological ferryman who transported souls across the River Styx in Greek mythology, while its other four moons simply go by the less impressive titles of S/2011 (134340) 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Source => scopethegalaxy.com

7. Lovesick in Sputnik Planum

If you're looking for a heart of ice in our solar system, look no further than the love life of everyone's favorite demoted planet: Pluto's got a massive, icy heart-shaped region called Sputnik Planum which, ironically enough, is smoother than any attempt to rekindle its planetary status. The serious reveal: This nitrogen ice-covered surface is so flat that, if you were standing on it, you'd be completely surrounded by a seamless expanse, unable to spot any hills or valleys in your lovesick view.
Source => space.com

8. Pluto: Hefty Kuiper Belt Celeb

Pluto, the little-noticed cousin of the solar system's popular clique, always seems to be lurking at the edge of the party: Although situated within the Kuiper Belt, an expanse beyond Neptune's orbit, Pluto is actually heftier than the majority of other celestial bodies in the area - dwarf planet Eris and a handful of other objects are the only ones that surpass it in size!
Source => space.com

9. Those Wild Winds of Pluto

Hold onto your stones, folks: Pluto's mysterious winds can whisk away even the heftiest of rockstars, reaching speeds of up to 1,000 miles per hour and making the most of its low gravity to send boulders on a levitating adventure!
Source => coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu

10. A Sizzling Plutonic Romance

Once upon a sizzling Plutonic romance, a hot-and-bothered dwarf planet was seeing way more action than Earthlings could ever imagine: Pluto's early formation involved massive impacts and internal heat, resulting in an underground ocean that's remained liquid to this day, and possibly providing a cozy habitat for some otherworldly aquatic roommates.
Source => astronomy.com

11. Pluto's Rebellious Orbit

Pluto, the celestial underdog with a rebellious streak: Its orbit is inclined at a mischievous 17 degrees and has an eccentricity of 0.25, making it the only planet to overlap with Neptune's path for 20 years every 248-year orbital cycle, resulting in a cosmic dance between these two planetary partners. But watch out, astronomers can't predict the longevity of Pluto's groove and what future steps it might take in this cosmic waltz.
Source => discovery.com

12. Skyscraper-Sized Icicles on Pluto

Pluto must have the coolest "cutting-edge" architecture in the solar system, boasting skyscraper-sized icicles that put Earth's buildings to shame: During NASA's New Horizons flyby, it was discovered that Pluto's surface has massive knife-like methane deposits, as tall as Earth's skyscrapers, which change and grow due to the dwarf planet's dynamic climate and freezing atmosphere.
Source => space.com

13. Dark Plutonian Name-Dropping

When it comes to naming celestial real estate, the Plutownians sure know how to drop it like it's Hades: Pluto's geological features are named after underworld-associated figures from various mythologies, with everything from mountain ranges to depressions representing gods, goddesses, explorers, and even space missions, as approved by the International Astronomical Union and chosen by New Horizons spacecraft scientists.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

14. Icy Delights: Pluto's Charisma

If you thought your ice cream sundae had a perplexing variety of toppings, you should see Pluto's chilly charisma: Its surface boasts a plethora of frozen delights, from nitrogen glaciers filling up basins to tectonic ridges, mysterious pits, and even potential ice volcanoes, making it geologically more diverse and active than initially expected.
Source => news.ucsc.edu