
Pluto is located far beyond Neptune in a region called the Kuiper Belt, which is full of icy objects and dwarf planets. This area sits at the outer edge of our solar system and is sometimes called the “third zone” of space. Pluto orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 3.7 billion miles, making it extremely far away from Earth. Because of this distance, sunlight is very weak there, and temperatures are incredibly cold. Pluto’s orbit is also unusual because it is more tilted and stretched than the orbits of the main planets. This makes its path around the Sun look quite different compared to planets like Earth or Mars. Its location in the Kuiper Belt is one of the reasons it’s classified differently from the main planets.
Tags of this article / Nature