Pluto: A Dwarf Planet Oddity (Infographic)

By Karl Tate
published

Pluto's weird features explained in infographic.
Learn all about Pluto's weirdly eccentric orbit, four moons and more in this SPACE.com infographic. (Image credit: Karl Tate/SPACE.com)

Orbiting in the dim and frozen outlands of the solar system, Pluto remained undiscovered until 1930. An early guess at Pluto’s size had it about the same as Earth’s. Now Pluto is known to be a dwarf planet only 1,473 miles (2,370 kilometers) in diameter. 

 

Pluto and its largest satellite Charon are tidally locked to one another. That is, each presents the same face to the other, and neither body moves in the other’s sky. Similarly, our moon is tidally locked to the Earth and always presents its “near side” face to us.

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Karl Tate
Karl Tate
Space.com contributor

Karl's association with Space.com goes back to 2000, when he was hired to produce interactive Flash graphics. From 2010 to 2016, Karl worked as an infographics specialist across all editorial properties of Purch (formerly known as TechMediaNetwork).  Before joining Space.com, Karl spent 11 years at the New York headquarters of The Associated Press, creating news graphics for use around the world in newspapers and on the web.  He has a degree in graphic design from Louisiana State University and now works as a freelance graphic designer in New York City.