You Can Experience ‘Pluto Time’ Twice a Day on Earth

As the saying goes , “Born too late to explore the earth, born too early to explore the cosmos.” It’s true that, barring some monumental development, our species is destined to live out the rest of its life on Earth, leaving space exploration to some future generation that really comes to its senses. But just because you’re stuck on Earth doesn’t mean you can’t explore other parts of the solar system. As it happens, you probably see what it’s like to live on Pluto twice a day and you have your whole life.

Here’s the basic idea: Pluto is 3.6 billion million miles from the Sun , about 40 times the Earth’s distance from the Sun. Obviously, the amount of light reaching Pluto is much less than the amount of light reaching Earth. After a journey of about five and a half hours, at the brightest point of Pluto’s day , the sunlight is about 1/900 of the intensity of light on Earth .

But this does not mean that the planet is completely dark. While this may be a fraction of the brightness of an Earth day, it is still 300 times brighter than the light from Earth’s moon. You probably won’t have a problem reading about Pluto at noon (unless, of course, you take off your space helmet ).

The thing is, you don’t have to imagine how much light it really is, since you probably live with it twice a day. Every day, just before sunrise and just before sunset, the amount of light we receive from the sun is equal to the amount of Pluto’s light at noon. NASA correctly calls it “Pluto Time”.

You can find out when the next Pluto time is in your area on the official NASA calculator website . Enter your coordinates (or your city, less precisely) and NASA will tell you your next time on Pluto. At the next sunrise or sunset, take time to process your Pluto time and imagine what the day will be like on the former ninth planet from the Sun.

I first came across this idea from Corndog Willy TikTok . (For YouTube fans , that’s Michael from VSauce .) Watch the video for footage from Pluto Times from around the world.