Discover the Cosmos: 15 Exciting Fun Facts About Pluto for Kids!

1. Pluto's Cosmic Tag with Neptune

Pluto plays a cosmic game of "Step on a crack, break Neptune's back": Did you know that its highly elliptical orbit causes it to cross Neptune's path, making it temporarily closer to the Sun than its neighbor? In fact, Pluto takes nearly 250 years to complete just one trip around our shining star!
Source => asc-csa.gc.ca

2. The Coldest Spot in the Solar System

Brrr-ace yourself for this frosty fact: Pluto's surface temperature can plunge to a bone-chilling -240 degrees Celsius (-400 degrees Fahrenheit), making it one of the coldest spots in the solar system and putting even the iciest Earth winters to shame!
Source => universetoday.com

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. Pluto: A Melting Pot of Popsicles

If you thought Ice Age was chilly: Pluto's surface is home to awe-inspiring mountains, valleys, and craters made of nothing but methane and nitrogen ice, as captured by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. This frosty dwarf planet, only half the width of the United States, has more diverse geological characteristics than a melting pot of popsicles!
Source => ndtv.com

4. Pluto's Big Frozen Heart

Who said Pluto doesn't have a heart? This frosty little dwarf planet actually has a gigantic valentine's day card etched into its surface: Pluto's famous heart-shaped glacier, Tombaugh Regio, is made of nitrogen ice and sprawls across an area the size of Texas! Named after the astronomer who discovered our distant friend, this "frozen heart" not only looks adorable from space but also plays a crucial role in Pluto's tilt and atmospheric circulation.
Source => cnn.com

5. Planetary Musical Chairs

Pluto plays planetary musical chairs: Its highly eccentric orbit can vary its distance from the sun between 4.4 billion to 7.4 billion kilometers, occasionally sneaking closer to the sun than Neptune and swapping cosmic lanes every 500 years.
Source => universetoday.com

6. Synchronized Swimming Moons

Ever heard of synchronized swimming in space? Pluto's moons are the cosmic masters of it: All of Pluto's moons have specific orbital resonances, meaning their orbits are related by ratios of small whole numbers, like Styx completing 3 orbits while Nix finishes 2, all thanks to their gravitational interactions!
Source => en.wikipedia.org

7. Dancing Planets: Neptune & Pluto

Did Neptune and Pluto secretly sign up for Dancing with the Stars? Get this: Pluto and Neptune have a unique 3:2 orbital resonance, meaning they are like dancing partners in space, and with every three trips Neptune takes around the Sun, Pluto twirls around twice - all without ever bumping into each other or getting thrown out of the cosmic dance hall!
Source => astronomy.com

8. Super High Jumps on Pluto

If you've ever dreamed of being a high-jumping superhero bounding through space, Pluto is the place for you: Due to its significantly weaker surface gravity, you'd be able to jump twice as high there compared to Earth, experiencing less gravitational pull and turning you into an interstellar kangaroo!
Source => coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu

9. Pluto's Underworldly Origins

Before you think of Mickey Mouse's lovable companion frolicking in space: Pluto is actually named after the Roman god of the underworld due to its icy-cold and faraway location from the Sun.
Source => coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu

10. Hide-and-Seek Champion of the Cosmos

Pluto, the celestial hide-and-seek champion, drew its name from the most stealthy of Roman gods, thanks to a mythologically well-versed 11-year-old: This dwarf planet, discovered in 1930, was considered a fully-fledged member of the cosmic nine until 2006, when the International Astronomical Union sent it to the non-planet penalty box.
Source => aps.org

11. Chilling Destination: Icy Pluto

Get ready for a trip to the most "chilling" vacation spot in our solar system, where the air is icy cold and the mountains are made of frozen water: Pluto's atmosphere is predominantly nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide, with a surface rich in methane ice and unique ice ridge terrain resembling snakeskin, blue haze particles in the atmosphere, and indications of a possible subsurface ocean beneath the diverse surface of its icy heart.
Source => space.com

12. The Floor is Nitrogen Ice Sublimation

You know how kids love to play 'The Floor is Lava'? Well, on Pluto, it's more like 'The Floor is Nitrogen Ice Sublimation'! Scientists are baffled by Pluto's endless game of frozen hide-and-seek: Turns out, Pluto's polygons spotted by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft are formed by the sublimation of nitrogen ice, hinting at low-temperature geological processes at work. But, as for those perplexing mountains and surface faults – that's still anyone's guess!
Source => nbcnews.com

13. E.T.'s Cozy Vacation Spot

Well, Pluto might just be the ultimate vacation spot for E.T. and his buddies: Scientists have discovered an underground ocean on this icy dwarf planet, suggesting that it could potentially be a cozy home for extraterrestrial life!
Source => astronomy.com

14. Hillary Montes: Pluto's Tallest Mountains

Hold onto your hiking boots, space explorers: The Hillary Montes on Pluto are named after Sir Edmund Hillary, and they tower 3.5 km high, making them the tallest mountains on the far out, icy dwarf planet! You can find these sky-high hills chilling in the southwest border of Sputnik Planitia, just south of the equator, and first spotted by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

15. Pluto's Dramatic Atmosphere

Pluto is like a dramatic weatherman with a never-ending wardrobe malfunction: its atmosphere is made of frozen nitrogen that sublimates into gas, creating winds and clouds, but because of its weak gravity, Pluto can't hold on to this atmosphere for long, causing it to continuously generate and lose its gaseous cover.
Source => windows2universe.org