This is a drawing showing the orbit of Pluto and the outer planets. It shows the planets on June 1, 1997. In the larger version at least, you can see dots next to the names indicating planet position. In 1997, Pluto was closer to the Sun than Neptune.
Click on image for full size
JPL/NASA
Pluto's Orbit
Pluto has the strangest orbit of all the planets in the solar system. The orbit comes inside the orbit of Neptune. This means Pluto is the 8th planet rather than the 9th planet for about 20 years at a time. Pluto was the 8th planet from January 1979 to February 1999. Neptune is now the 9th planet for over 200 years!
It takes 248 years for Pluto to complete its orbit. This means that a single Pluto year is 248 earth years long!
You might also be interested in:
Pluto is a frigid ball of ice and rock that orbits far from the Sun on the frozen fringes of our Solar System. Considered a planet, though a rather odd one, from its discovery in 1930 until 2006, it was
...more
Pluto is so far away, and has never been explored. Questions to answer about Pluto include the following: What are the geologic features of the surface? (pictures of the surface) If there are bare spots,
...more
It may seem hard to believe that Pluto could have an atmosphere because it is so cold, but it does. Because there are times when Pluto is closer to the sun than is Neptune (making it the 8th planet for
...more
Astronomers are starting to search for more moons of Pluto. Pluto only has one moon that we know about. Pluto's moon is called Charon. But Pluto is very far away, so it is hard to see even with very big
...more Of all the planets and moons in the solar system, Pluto and Charon are the two which are the most alike. They are almost the same size, and they are very close together. Pluto and Charon are so close
...more
No one knows whether or not Pluto has a magnetosphere. Scientists were very surprised to find that Jupiter's icy moon Ganymede had a magnetosphere because it is hard to explain how an icy body can develop
...morePluto has // Call the moon count function defined in the document head print_moon_count('pluto'); moons. One of the moons is very big. The big moon is name Charon. The other two moons are small. They don't
...more
