h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some stuff about Plute - I don't have the particulars handy, but you should probably mention that Pluto's orbit is very eccentric and at times, carries it inside the orbit of Neptune - relinquishing the title of most distant planet for those times.

Now on to the random junk:

The Sun appears no larger than Jupiter does from Earth at its closest point. The dim reflected sunlight from Pluto's surface takes 5 hours and 40 minutes to reach the Earth.

Pluto's orbit is inclined 17 degrees to the plane of the rest of the planets.

If the Earth's orbit was as elliptically shaped as Pluto's, it would approach within 12 million miles of Mars at its farthest point from the Sun and as near as 2 million miles from Venus at its nearest approach to the Sun.

Pluto's surface, the coldest of any planet, is too frigid for an atmosphere. The estimated surface temperature of -230degrees Celsius (-382 degrees Fahrenheit) would freeze any atmosphere and keep it on the surface.

Hope that helps!


- X

Thanks for these, Jimi.

Cheers!

You have a point about the low surface temperature, but, according to the book _Pluto and Charon_, by Alan Stern and Jacqueline Mitton, Pluto has been confermed to have an atmosphere. Anyway, some gasses freeze at amazingly low temperatures. Helium boils at 5 K (-268 C), so you can imagion how cold it freezes. Hydrogen melts at -259.31 C. As you can see, there are several gasses that could remain in a gasseous state on Pluto, so Pluto can have an atmosphere.