Pluto:
Cloze Activity
Fill in the blanks below. |
Answers |
Word Bank :
Tombaugh
farthest
dot
moon
spacecraft |
mass
gravity
8
1978
ninth |
direction
Sun
orbit
Pluto
asteroid |
Pluto is the ________________________ and usually the ________________________ planet from the Sun in our Solar System; it is also the smallest planet in our Solar System. This cold, rocky planet was the last planet to be discovered. Clyde W. ________________________ discovered Pluto in 1930. Pluto is the only planet in our Solar System that has not been visited by our ________________________ yet. We only have blurry pictures of its surface. From Pluto, the Sun would look like a tiny ________________________ in the sky.
Pluto is about 1,413 miles (2274 km) in diameter. This is about 1/5 the diameter of the Earth. It is smaller than a lot of the other planets' moons, including our ________________________.
Pluto's
________________________ is about 1.29 x 10 22 kg; it is the
least massive planet in our Solar System. Pluto is about 1/500th
of the mass of the Earth. The ________________________ on Pluto
is only 8% of the gravity on Earth. A 100 pound person on Pluto
would weigh only ________________________ pounds.
Each day on Pluto takes 6.39 Earth days. Each year on Pluto takes 247.7 Earth years (that is, it takes 247.7 Earth years for Pluto to orbit the ________________________ once).
Pluto has a very eccentric ________________________; that means that its distance from the sun varies a lot during its orbit around the sun. Pluto also rotates about its axis in the opposite ________________________ from most of the other planets. Pluto's orbit is tilted from the plane of the ecliptic. This angle, its orbital inclination, is 17.15°. This is the largest inclination of any of the planets. Pluto's unusual orbit makes some scientists think that Pluto is not a regular planet, but perhaps an ________________________.
Pluto has one moon, Charon, that is almost as big as ________________________ itself. Charon was discovered by Jim Christy in ________________________. Charon was named after the mythological demon who ferried people across the mythological river Styx into Hades
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