Did Pluto Take a Punch? [from 2003]

Sky & Telescope ^ | July 23, 2003 | Govert Schilling

[SunkenCiv]

If David J. Tholen (University of Hawaii) is right, Pluto was probably hit by a small Kuiper Belt object in the not-too-distant past. One consequence of that collision, he argues, is seen in the planet's motion -- Pluto and its satellite Charon now waltz around each other in slightly out-of-round orbits. And since tidal forces in the tight planet-moon system should damp out any deviations from purly circular orbits within 10 million years or so, the impact must have occurred relatively recently. "It could have happened a century ago," Tholen says... Tholen and Marc W. Buie (Lowell Observatory)... found an orbital eccentricity near 0.0075 instead of zero, the expected value... Luckily, a series of mutual eclipses of the two objects in the late 1980s had enabled Buie to derive a crude albedo map for Pluto, so the effect could be corrected for. But even then a small eccentricity of 0.003 remained -- Charon's orbit truly seems to be ever so slightly out of round. If verified, the eccentricity implies an impactor that was many tens of kilometers across, which most likely hit Pluto... To try to eliminate the remaining uncertainty, Buie has observed Pluto and Charon repeatedly with Hubble's new Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)... As for the cause of the eccentricity, Buie believes a mere close encounter with a Kuiper Belt object would do the trick.

[SunkenCiv]

Couldn't find an update on this.

[SunkenCiv]

(Tholen and Buie quoted)

Pluto is Undergoing Global Warming, Researchers Find [not man-made]
Massachussetts Institute of Technology
Astronomy Dept (w. Lowell Observatory)
October 9, 2002 | Massachussets Inst. of Technology News Office
Posted on 01/26/2007 8:57:45 AM PST by Moseley
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1774174/posts

[SunkenCiv]

David Tholen:
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/tholen/

Mark Buie:
http://www.lowell.edu/users/buie/pluto/pluto.html

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

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[Bubba_Leroy]

Pluto is Undergoing Global Warming, Researchers Find

It's Bush's fault. Bush and those damned SUVs.

Women and minorities will be hardest hit.

[WrightOnTarget]

The scene just before impact:

[Redleg Duke]

Probably Bush’s Fault!

[pabianice]

Scifi writer Larry Niven called this years ago. Pluto was a moon of Neptune until it was hit by a runaway alien spaceship.

[martin_fierro]

I B T U J!
n e h r o
  f e a k
  o   n e
  r   u s
  e   s

[NaughtiusMaximus]

I hope Mickey and Goofy are OK.

[Lazamataz]

My favorite quote from Futurama:

Fry: Pine needles. Oh, man, this is great! Hey, as long as you don't make me smell Uranus.

Leela: I don't get it.

Farnsworth: I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.

Fry: Oh. What's it called now?

Farnsworth: Urectum.

[SunkenCiv]

I’m just glad Laz came through for us. ;’)

[MikeD]

There probably won’t be much of an update until the New Horizons flyby in 2015. There is little observation of Pluto going on right now — we are too busy looking for Kuiper Belt objects in Pluto’s general direction that New Horizons can fly by after it passes Pluto.

[SunkenCiv]

I’m glad that mission got launched. Sure took a long time, and it got cancelled and reinstated a couple of times.

But anyway, both authors have used big scopes to make Pluto observations, but I haven’t found any further comment on this particular idea. I’m disappointed.