Amazing space: 10 Interesting facts about dwarf planet Pluto!

As New Horizons spacecraft gets closer and closer to Pluto in advance of its July 2015 flyby, it has managed to capture the first high resolution photographs of the planet and gather incredible data on Pluto and its worlds.

As the science enthusiasts await for more information about this dwarf planet, here are some well known interesting facts to brush up your knowledge:

1. Pluto was discovered on February 18th, 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh of the Lowell Observatory. But in 2006, Pluto was reclassified from a planet to a dwarf planet.
2. Pluto is named after the Roman god of the underworld
3. Pluto takes the longest time of the eight planets to orbit around the sun.The time it takes to accomplish one orbit is almost about 248 Earth years!
4. Pluto has five known moons - Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.
5. On Pluto, the sun rises and sets about once a week. Pluto spins in the opposite direction as Earth, which means the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
6. A person who weighs 100 lbs. on Earth would weigh the least on Pluto than on any other planet, at 6.7 lbs. on Pluto.
7. It takes Pluto 6 days, 9 hours, and 17 minutes to spin once, making it the planet with the second-slowest rotation in the solar system.
8. It takes about five hours for sunlight to reach Pluto while it just takes eight minutes to reach Earth.
9. Pluto is one of the coldest places in the solar system, with surface temperatures hovering around minus 375 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 225 degrees Celsius).
10. Pluto is one third water! This is in the form of water ice which is more than 3 times as much water as in all the Earth’s oceans.