WHY PLUTO IS NO LONGER A PLANET

                                     PLUTO

 Since its discovery in 1930, pluto has been a bit of a puzzle:

                              

• It's smaller than any other planet -- even smaller than Earth's moon.
• It's dense and rocky, like the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars). However, its nearest neighbors are the gaseous Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). For this reason, many scientists believe that Pluto originated elsewhere in space and got caught in the sun's gravity. Some astronomers once theorized that Pluto used to be one of Neptune's moons.
  
• Earlier, Pluto was considered as the ninth planet in our solar system. It was first discovered by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. It was on the list of planets until 2006, when the definition of a planet changed, it didn’t match with Pluto’s features. Thus, Pluto lost its position as a planet. It comes under the category of dwarf planets. So, now we have only 8 planets in our solar system.
• Even though Pluto fits to the first two rules, the third rule doesn’t match with it. It has not ‘cleared the neighborhood’. It rotates the sun in an ellipse or oval shaped path, unlike the circular path like planets. Because of this orbit structure, it intersects with Neptune’s orbit. This is why Pluto is no longer considered a planet. Instead, it has been given a new position as dwarf planet. Dwarf planets are actually celestial bodies that are round orbiting the sun but do not fit into the third rule. So far, there are five dwarf planets discovered in our solar system. They are Pluto, Eris, ceres, Makemake, and Haumea.Some interesting facts about Pluto.   
  
                                                         Some interesting facts about Pluto.
  • The size of Pluto is similar to the size of our Moon.
  • It takes 248 Earth years for Pluto to orbit around the sun.
  • Pluto was named after the Roman god of the underworld, Pluto.
  • Pluto has five known moons. In order of distance from Pluto they are Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. The largest of Pluto's moons is called Charon. Charon is about half the size of Pluto and weighs about 7 times less than Pluto.