What is the size of Pluto compared to Earth?

What is the size of Pluto compared to Earth?

Size and Distance With a radius of 715 miles (1,151 kilometers), Pluto is about 1/6 the width of Earth. If Earth was the size of a nickel, Pluto would be about as big as a popcorn kernel. From an average distance of 3.7 billion miles (5.9 billion kilometers), Pluto is 39 astronomical units away from the Sun.

What are the three main characteristics of Pluto?

Density, mass and volume. Although all of the planets beyond Mars are gas giants, Pluto is small and rocky. The tiny body has a mass of only 1.31 x 10 22 kilograms, about two-tenths of a percent of Earth’s.

Does Pluto bulge at its center?

Unlike many of the planets in the solar system, such as Earth, Pluto does not bulge at its center; its radius — 1,185 km (737 miles) — is the same at its poles and at its equator.

What is the distance from the sun to Pluto?

One astronomical unit (abbreviated as AU), is the distance from the Sun to Earth. From this distance, it takes sunlight 5.5 hours to travel from the Sun to Pluto. If you were to stand on the surface of Pluto at noon, the Sun would be 1/900 the brightness it is here on Earth, or about 300 times as bright as our full moon.

Recent measurements obtained by New Horizons indicate that Pluto has a diameter of 2370 km, 18.5% that of Earth’s, while Charon has a diameter of 1208 km, 9.5% that of Earth’s. The approximate sizes of Pluto’s moons Nix and Hydra compared to Denver, Colorado.

Is Pluto a big or small planet?

dwarf planet
Pluto, once considered the ninth and most distant planet from the sun, is now the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system.

Can Pluto fit on Earth?

154 Plutos can fit in Earth. Earth has a radius of 6,371 kilometers and Pluto has a radius of 1,188.5 kilometers. Since both are spherical in shape,…

Why is Pluto not a full size planet?

Answer. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgraded the status of Pluto to that of a dwarf planet because it did not meet the three criteria the IAU uses to define a full-sized planet. Essentially Pluto meets all the criteria except one—it “has not cleared its neighboring region of other objects.”

What is Pluto’s relative size?

Pluto is only 1,430 miles (2,302 kilometers) in diameter and is about 1/6th the size of Earth. Pluto is actually smaller than our own Moon!