Pluto Traditional Cache

This is the ninth cache in a series dedicated to our Solar System. Each cache page will have information about the planet it represents. The series is sponsored by the Carolina Caching Club. We’ll be adding new caches to the series until all 9 planets and the Sun are represented.

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh and was considered the smallest planet in our Solar System, smaller than Earth's Moon, and half the width of Jupiter's moon, Ganymede. However, in August 2006 the 26th General Assembly for the International Astronomical Union (IAU) met and PLUTO was stripped of its status as a planet when scientists from around the world redefined it as a "dwarf planet".

This means that the Solar System consists of eight "planets" Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. More "dwarf planets" are expected to be announced by the IAU in the coming months and years. Currently a dozen candidate "dwarf planets" are listed on IAU's "dwarf planet" watchlist, which keeps changing as new objects are found and the physics of the existing candidates becomes better known.

Since Pluto is now a "dwarf planet", we decided to make Geocache Pluto a micro-cache.

Pluto orbits the Sun on a different plane than the true 8 planets, going over them and below them. Pluto was closer to the Sun than Neptune from 1969 to 1999!

A day on Pluto lasts for 6 days and 9 hours, which is the second slowest speed of rotation in the Solar System (after Venus, which takes 243 days to turn on its axis).

This micro cache is hidden in uptown Charlotte in a public green area. (Many cachers have reported poor GPSr reception in the area of the cache, so you may want to take the clue with you if you can't find the small container.) The small park is situated at the entrance of Carillon on West Trade Street and is an exquisitely landscaped public plaza centered around a 30 foot high multi-colored aluminum sculpture named The Garden designed by Jerry Peart. You will need to bring your own pen/pencil to sign the log! Enjoy the little park, but beware of muggles while you're searching. When hunting the cache, please be sure to 'hide' the container as best you can (I know that you don't have much choice). This cache has been vandalized once, so the less visible the container is, the better! Thanks for your help with this.

Links to the other caches in this series: