Name:
Date: Period:
Part of this book will be read in class, some in partners and some at home. Each time you are assigned a section to read you are responsible for answering these questions.
Chapter 2: Pluto in History
1. What were people looking for when looking for Pluto?
2. What planets did the ancients know about?
3. What did everyone think Uranus was?
4. Why did everyone think Uranus was acting funny?
5. How was Neptune found?
6. Why didn’t astronomers want to believe that there was an eighth planet?
7. Why did astronomers name the new planet “Planet X” before they found it?
8. What is a blank comparator?
9. What else did Tombaugh discover?
10. How big did Tombaugh first think Pluto was?
11. What did the geology newsletter say was going to happen to Pluto?
12. Do astronomers think there is still a Planet X? Why not?
13. What did Giuseppi Piazzi do? What about Wilhelm Olbers?
14. What did Herschel name Ceres and Pallas?
15. In 1851 how many planets did we have? What were these newest planets really?
16. How big is the asteroid Ceres?
17. What does “Planets” mean in Greek?
18. Why weren’t the sun and moon considered planets anymore after the mid 1500’s?
Chapter 3: Pluto in Science
1. What is Pluto made of? What makes up Pluto by mass? By volume?
2. How does Pluto compare to Mercury?
3. What is unique about Pluto’s orbit?
4. What is Charon? How did astronomers find it?
5. What is unique about Pluto and Charon together?
6. What is a tidal lock?
7. Neptune and Pluto cross orbits; will they ever hit each other? Why or why not?
8. Why is there extra mass around Pluto and in its orbital path but not near the orbits of the other planets?
9. What is so special about the shape of a sphere? Why do planets take the shape of spheres?
10. How far is it from Earth’s highest elevation to lowest elevation?
11. What is the diameter of Earth?
12. Why don’t asteroids or Mars’ moons make themselves spherical?
13. What is wrong with the plaques that were on the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space probes? (Figure 3.6)
14. If you weigh 20 lbs on Jupiter’s moons but only 10 lbs on Pluto what do you know about Jupiter’s moons?
15. How far away is Pluto? How cold is Pluto? How small is Pluto?
16. What is so special about New Horizons? What is the probe looking for?
17. Who was invited to the New Horizons launch?
18. What did the Hubble Space Telescope help find in 2005?
19. What were Pluto II and Pluto III eventually named? Why are those names so appropriate?
20. Why do you think so much time and energy was spent on naming Pluto’s “moons”?
21. Looking at Figure 3.13, why couldn’t the moons, “candidate satellites,” be seen before 2005?