Fast Facts on the Planet Pluto History Size and More

About the planet Pluto, fast facts including history, size, and more.

PLUTO

The strangest, least-known, and farthest planet from earth is Pluto. Decades of searching for this planet failed until, in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh, after looking at thousands of star images, discovered the new planet while working at the Lowell Observatory. The name Pluto was chosen because the mythical Pluto's brothers were Jupiter and Neptune and the 1st 2 letters, which form the astronomers' symbol for the planet, P and L, are the initials of Percival Lowell, the luckless founder of the observatory.

Pluto is such a small planet, has such a peculiar orbit--it actually comes closer to the sun than Neptune--that some astronomers would like to treat it as something other than a planet, perhaps a runaway moon belonging to Jupiter or Neptune.