Posted on 12/28/2005 2:36:18 PM PST by SunkenCiv
One leading proposal would define a planet as any object whose diameter exceeds 2,000 kilometers and that is round as a result of gravity, criteria that would encompass anything Pluto-size or larger, including Xena. But that doesn't sit well with some astronomers, who are irked that the scrawny iceball with the cockeyed orbit earned membership into the club in the first place. "Pluto is an impostor," says Harvard astronomer Brian Marsden, a member of the IAU committee. "The simplest thing is to get rid of it and say we've got eight."
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
I dont think it is a planet, but it IS considered one, so be it, its "grandfathered in"..
:')
I think it would be goofy to not accept Pluto.
[rimshot!]
http://abc.net.au/tv/btn/offbeatnews/
"As well as these names Frank Zappa gave his own name to two asteroids:3834 Zappafrank, and 16745 Zappa as well as the ZapA gene of a microbe."
Someday you people will finally wake up and realize that the other planets are vastly overated...
Who are "you people"?
[my emphasis]Planet XThe third search for Planet X began in April 1927. No progress was made in 1927-1928. In December 1929 a young farmer's boy and amateur astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh from Kansas, was hired to do the search. Tombaugh started his work in April 1929. On January 23 and 29, Tombaugh exposed the pair of plates on which he found Pluto when examining them on February 18. By then Tombaugh had examined hundreds of plate pairs and millions of stars... Tombaugh continued his search another 13 years, and examined the sky from the north celestial pole to 50 deg. south declination, down to magnitude 16-17, sometimes even 18. Tombaugh examined some 90 million images of some 30 million stars over more than 30,000 square degrees on the sky. He found one new globular cluster, 5 new open star clusters, one new supercluster of 1800 galaxies and several new small galaxy clusters, one new comet, about 775 new asteroids -- but no new planet except Pluto. Tombaugh concluded that no unknown planet brighter than magnitude 16.5 did exist -- only a planet in an almost polar orbit and situated near the south celestial pole could have escaped his detection. He could have picked up a Neptune-sized planet at seven times the distance of Pluto, or a Pluto-sized planet out to 60 a.u.
by Paul Schlyter
The Nine Planets:
Hypothetical Planets
Michael Moore is a planet!
Heh... I thought I'd never laugh at another one of those.
Planets in all the wrong places
The Christian Science Monitor | 03/06/06 | Michelle Thaller
Posted on 03/06/2006 8:16:39 PM EST by KevinDavis
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1591313/posts
Having Pups Over Pluto And The Planetary Misfits Of The Kuipers
spacedaily.com | 12 Mar 03 | Robert Sanders
Posted on 03/12/2003 8:27:54 PM EST by RightWhale
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/863325/posts
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