Pluto

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  • Pluto
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Abstract from DBPedia
    Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is slightly less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Compared to Earth's moon, Pluto has only one sixth its mass and one third its volume. Pluto has a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit, ranging from 30 to 49 astronomical units (4.5 to 7.3 billion kilometers; 2.8 to 4.6 billion miles) from the Sun. Light from the Sun takes 5.5 hours to reach Pluto at its average distance (39.5 AU [5.91 billion km; 3.67 billion mi]). Pluto's eccentric orbit periodically brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune, but a stable orbital resonance prevents them from colliding. Pluto has five known moons: Charon, the largest, whose diameter is just over half that of Pluto; Styx; Nix; Kerberos; and Hydra. Pluto and Charon are sometimes considered a binary system because the barycenter of their orbits does not lie within either body, and they are tidally locked. The New Horizons mission was the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moons, making a flyby on July 14, 2015 and taking detailed measurements and observations. Pluto was discovered in 1930, the first object in the Kuiper belt. It was immediately hailed as the ninth planet, but its planetary status was questioned when it was found to be much smaller than expected. These doubts increased following the discovery of additional objects in the Kuiper belt starting in the 1990s, and particularly the more massive scattered disk object Eris in 2005. In 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) formally redefined the term planet to exclude dwarf planets such as Pluto. Many planetary astronomers, however, continue to consider Pluto and other dwarf planets to be planets.

    冥王星(めいおうせい、134340 Pluto)は、太陽系外縁天体内のサブグループ(冥王星型天体)の代表例とされる、準惑星に区分される天体である。1930年にクライド・トンボーによって発見され、2006年までは太陽系第9惑星とされていた。離心率が大きな楕円形の軌道を持ち、黄道面から大きく傾いている。直径は2,370キロメートル であり、地球の衛星である月の直径(3,474キロメートル)よりも小さい。冥王星の最大の衛星カロンは直径が冥王星の半分以上あり、それを理由に二重天体とみなされることもある。

    (Source: http://dbpedia.org/resource/Pluto)