What is the difference between pluto and saturn

That means that sometimes Pluto is a lot nearer to the Sun than at other times, At times Pluto's orbit brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune. The last time this happened was from to It won't happen again until Its swirling clouds are colorful due to different types of trace gases.

And a major feature in its swirling clouds is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm more than 10, miles wide. It has raged at more than mph for the last years, at least. Jupiter has a strong magnetic field, and with 75 moons, it looks a bit like a miniature solar system. The sixth planet from the sun, Saturn is known most for its rings. When polymath Galileo Galilei first studied Saturn in the early s, he thought it was an object with three parts: a planet and two large moons on either side.

Not knowing he was seeing a planet with rings, the stumped astronomer entered a small drawing — a symbol with one large circle and two smaller ones — in his notebook, as a noun in a sentence describing his discovery. More than 40 years later, Christiaan Huygens proposed that they were rings. The rings are made of ice and rock and scientists are not yet sure how they formed.

The gaseous planet is mostly hydrogen and helium and has numerous moons. The seventh planet from the sun, Uranus is an oddball. It has clouds made of hydrogen sulfide, the same chemical that makes rotten eggs smell so foul. It rotates from east to west like Venus. But unlike Venus or any other planet, its equator is nearly at right angles to its orbit — it basically orbits on its side. Astronomers believe an object twice the size of Earth collided with Uranus roughly 4 billion years ago, causing Uranus to tilt.

That tilt causes extreme seasons that last plus years, and the sun beats down on one pole or the other for 84 Earth-years at a time. The collision is also thought to have knocked rock and ice into Uranus' orbit.

These later became some of the planet's 27 moons. Methane in the atmosphere gives Uranus its blue-green tint. It also has 13 sets of faint rings. The eighth planet from the sun, Neptune is about the size of Uranus and is known for supersonic strong winds.

Neptune is far out and cold. The planet is more than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth. Neptune was the first planet predicted to exist by using math, before it was visually detected.

Irregularities in the orbit of Uranus led French astronomer Alexis Bouvard to suggest some other planet might be exerting a gravitational tug. German astronomer Johann Galle used calculations to help find Neptune in a telescope.

During this time, Pluto was actually closer to the Sun than Neptune. One day on Pluto takes about hours. Its axis of rotation is tilted 57 degrees with respect to the plane of its orbit around the Sun, so it spins almost on its side. Pluto also exhibits a retrograde rotation; spinning from east to west like Venus and Uranus.

This moon system might have formed by a collision between Pluto and another similar-sized body early in the history of the solar system. Charon, the biggest of Pluto's moons, is about half the size of Pluto itself, making it the largest satellite relative to the planet it orbits in our solar system.

It orbits Pluto at a distance of just 12, miles 19, kilometers. For comparison, our Moon is 20 times farther away from Earth. Pluto and Charon are often referred to as a double planet. Charon's orbit around Pluto takes hours — the same time it takes Pluto to complete one rotation. This means Charon neither rises nor sets, but hovers over the same spot on Pluto's surface. The same side of Charon always faces Pluto, a state called tidal locking. Pluto's other four moons are much smaller, less than miles kilometers wide.

They're also irregularly shaped, not spherical like Charon. Unlike many other moons in the solar system, these moons are not tidally locked to Pluto. Dwarf planet Pluto is a member of a group of objects that orbit in a disc-like zone beyond the orbit of Neptune called the Kuiper Belt.

This distant realm is populated with thousands of miniature icy worlds, which formed early in the history of our solar system about 4. These icy, rocky bodies are called Kuiper Belt objects, transneptunian objects, or plutoids.

Pluto is about two-thirds the diameter of Earth's Moon and probably has a rocky core surrounded by a mantle of water ice. Interesting ices like methane and nitrogen frost coat the surface.

Due to its lower density, Pluto's mass is about one-sixth that of Earth's Moon. Pluto's surface is characterized by mountains, valleys, plains, and craters. The temperature on Pluto can be as cold as to degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius.

The composition of the gas giants is also very different from the composition of Pluto. Gas giants consist of a small rocky core with an outer liquid layer, surrounded by a deep gaseous atmosphere. By contrast, Pluto's structure is at least half rock, surrounded by a layer of deep ice. Dr James Holloway has been writing about games, geek culture and whisky since What Are the Characteristics of the Planet Jupiter? Amazing Facts on Saturn.

Terrains of the Planets. Characteristics of a Dwarf Planet. Describe the Surface Terrain on Jupiter.