What becomes for us the most interesting, and sometimes frightening? Secret. The unknown. Inexplicability. And this applies to absolutely any area. Even space. Or rather, especially space. Since it is the cosmos that conceals a myriad of unanswered questions and scares us with its unpredictability and unstudiedness. One of these attracting puzzles is the planet Pluto - the planet farthest from our solar system, discovered back in the 1930s. Although later, while studying older photographs dated 1914, this planet was seen again.
The observations that are now being conducted do not provide enough knowledge to even determine: Pluto is a planet, or not? It looks like a star with a fifteen-star magnitude. Mars, perhaps, would also have a similar brilliance, if it were at the same distance from us. And this means that Pluto may have the size of Mars. A more accurate estimate of the diameter of the planet was given by the 1950th. J. Kuiper managed to measure an angular diameter equal to, according to his testimony, 0 ", 23. If you" translate "to our standards, the diameter will be 2900 km.
In 1968, from April 28 to the 29th, 12 observatories waited for Pluto to pass by another star of the same size. In theory, if Kuiper was not mistaken in size, Pluto should have closed it. But the brilliance did not fade. And this suggests that Pluto in diameter is not more than 5500 km. The mass of Pluto was even more difficult to calculate. He did not have satellites; comets near him did not pass.
The American astronomers R. Dankomb, P. Seidelman, E. Jackson and the Polish astronomer V. Klepchinsky did a tremendous job: they processed 5426 observations on the position of Neptune from 1846 to 1868 and found out: the mass of Pluto, relative to the earth, is 0.11. Such is the mass of Mars, but Pluto is less than Mars. Taking for him the calculated mass, diameter of about 5500 km, we get the average density of Pluto - 8 g / cm ^ 3, and yet it turns out too much. In 1978, J. Christie makes an unexpected discovery: he discovers a Plutonium satellite in old photographs. The discovery was confirmed by a four-meter reflector at the Cerro Tololo Observatory. It was the satellite’s appeal that helped determine the mass of Pluto itself: 1.1 10 ^ 25 g, and this is 1/500 of the mass of our Earth! And it is these calculations that made it possible to make a new statement: the planet Pluto among the planets of our system is the smallest!
Well, the temperature, in theory, should be on it about 40 K. At this temperature, methane is condensing. So, methane ice may well be on Pluto. The 1977 observations confirmed the assumption: the infrared spectrum finally made it possible to consider the characteristic bands. A little earlier, in 1970, using a 60-cm reflector, bands were found that resembled traces of iron absorption. In the 1930s, on March 12, another message appeared: Lowell’s many years of searching and researching a planet of interest beyond Neptune, finally led to the discovery of a new, unknown object, the trajectory and speed of its movement for seven weeks corresponded to the body, was sequentially beyond the planet’s orbit Neptune, at a distance indicated by Lowell, the magnitude is fifteenth. Soon, the astronomical world decided to give the planet a name - the planet Pluto, the most suitable for it, since the movement of the planet occurred in the unlit, external areas of our solar system. The first two letters used in the name are the initials of Percival Lowell, who claimed the existence of an unknown planet that died a year after the published prediction.
The discovery of Pluto could take place in 1919. Intervention intervened. Then Milton Humanson calculated the possible position of the planet, photographed the area of its possible position and obtained images of this planet. An emulsion fell on some of the images and it was no longer possible to prove the presence of a celestial body . The planet Pluto was waiting for its discovery ... Already in the 1930th, knowing reliably about the existence of Pluto and its orbit, it became possible to identify images obtained earlier.