Pluto to be Downgraded!

Astronomers voting in the Czech capital have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.
About 2,500 experts were in Prague for the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) general assembly.

Astronomers rejected a proposal that would have retained Pluto as a planet and bring three other objects into the cosmic club.

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona.

Bring back Pluto!

Can we petition them and protest like we did with New Coke?

Pluto! The dude planet! It goes the other way round the sun to the other planets! It's the furthest one out! Apart from 33 years of its orbit where it's closer than Neptune! And that's happening now!

Don't make it come down here!

The vote effectively means the ninth planet will now be airbrushed out of school and university textbooks.

The decision was made at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in the Czech capital Prague.

Pluto's status has been contested for many years as it is further away and considerably smaller than the eight other planets in our Solar System.

Since the early 1990s, astronomers have found several other objects of comparable size to Pluto in an outer region of the Solar System called the Kuiper Belt.

Some astronomers believe Pluto belongs with this population of small, icy "Trans-Neptunians", not with the objects we call planets.

Allowances were once made for Pluto on account of its size. At just 2,360km (1,467 miles) across, Pluto is significantly smaller than the other planets. But until recently, it was still the biggest known object in the Kuiper Belt.

That changed with the discovery of 2003 UB313 by Professor Mike Brown and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). After being measured with the Hubble Space Telescope, it was shown to be some 3,000km (1,864 miles) in diameter, making it larger than the ninth planet.

Apart from when it isn't, of course.

NEVER FORGET

XENA, call it by it's name!!!

i thought they were going to be called plutons

"Oh Pluto, Pluto!
How dare they screw you! No!"

can't talk = not a real disney character. downgraded!!

xpost

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/gold_voyager.gif

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

Personally I welcome the news and embrace our new Anti-Pluto overlords.

Also Afghanistan should be declassified as a country and re classified as a dwarf country.

Lovecraft was right! (There are various references to the outer space critters being from Yuggoth aka Pluto.)

I keep coming across reports on this that are all "Pluto ain't a planet anymore" but none of them actually bother going into what definition of "planet" they've adopted that makes that so. Just like some bullet points would be nice, in case I stumble on something at lunch and can't decide whether it's a planet or not. Is it the whole thing where Pluto doesn't orbit on its own center of gravity (but rather some midpoint between itself and its moon)? (But there are double planets elsewhere, aren't there?)

Pluto, which has been widely regarded as a planet since its discovery in 1930, has an oblong orbit that overlaps with Neptune's, so is disqualified full planet status.
from guardianunlimited.co.uk

so that doesn't disqualify binary planets as long as the binary planets have a clear orbit.

And this isn't new it seems:

Now, two of the objects that at one point were cruising toward possible full-fledged planet status will join Pluto as dwarfs: the asteroid Ceres, which was a planet in the 1800s before it got demoted, and 2003 UB313, an icy object slightly larger than Pluto nicknamed Xena by its discoverer, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology.

Pluto was automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's

So, erm, doesn't that mean that Neptune's orbit hasn't been cleared either? And Neptune is still a planet.

xpost

In other words, Pluto's orbit isn't planet like. It's just a "thing" like comets and kuiper belt objects.

Those close cooperators of astronomers the geologists had objections -- "pluton" means something in that field.

Neptune: "It wasn't me, he started it!"

That was my first thought too. And it seems we're not the only ones...

(Plutonian Replanetification Movement)

Posted: Fri Aug 18, 2006 8:31 pm

Holy crap. NOW I get it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_planets#Pluto

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42013000/jpg/_42013520_tom_ap_203.jpg

/dirty mind

I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Half the planets in, what remains of the Solar System, have moons that are bigger than Pluto. It's still a planet; just a minor one.

"It's fucked up what they did to Pluto! I thought that's where we got liquid nitrogen from. Man, that's fucked up."

"I feel upset because I kind of felt like Pluto was my friend even though it was in space." Jonah, 9.

Part of the reaction to this seems to stem from a sense of upheaval, that a world view accepted as fact has been subverted. I'm not a scientist, but if Pluto is no longer a so-called "planet," what were the original criteria for planets, and have these since changed?

Pluto re-planeted by Illinois

I am upset that Illinois is claiming Tombaugh when he is clearly property of my city, Las Cruces, NM. I mean I go to a church with a stained glass of him freaking discovering Pluto.

Also I learned BILL NYE the SCIENCE GUY had a big hand in de-planetizing Pluto...oh when childhood heroes braek heart ;_;

He didn't want that lady to be right about the new kind of clouds, either -- he said so in an interview. Whadda Scrooge.

I mean I go to a church with a stained glass of him freaking discovering Pluto.

...and why aren't you sharing a photo link of this. Please. :-)

http://uuchurchlc.org/IMAGES/Window-Tombaugh-Vlarge.jpg

There is also an AMAZING LIST of jokes he made of puns about crows in there...I'll get a photo soon & upload it.

(Looks like he discovered the planet in AZ but founded the Unitarian Church here!)

The church has been in threat of razing by angry villagers, who hate its heretical positing of a heliocentric world.

That photo has made my day. :-)

"The Heliocentric Worlds of Clyde W. Tombaugh" is not as good as Sun Ra's; dude just can't play keybs.

Just to confirm: went to Hayden Planetarium yesterday and, according to Whoopie Goldberg, Pluto is still not a planet.

New Maps For These Territories

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/421589main_p1006aw-540.jpg

NASA today released the most detailed set of images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show an icy and dark molasses-colored, mottled world that is undergoing seasonal changes in its surface color and brightness. Pluto has become significantly redder, while its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter. These changes are most likely consequences of surface ices sublimating on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole as the dwarf planet heads into the next phase of its 248-year-long seasonal cycle. The dramatic change in color apparently took place in a two-year period, from 2000 to 2002.

The Hubble images will remain our sharpest view of Pluto until NASA's New Horizons probe is within six months of its Pluto flyby. The Hubble pictures are proving invaluable for picking out the planet's most interesting-looking hemisphere for the New Horizons spacecraft to swoop over when it flies by Pluto in 2015.

Though Pluto is arguably one of the public's favorite planetary objects, it is also the hardest of which to get a detailed portrait because the world is small and very far away. Hubble resolves surface variations a few hundred miles across, which are too coarse for understanding surface geology. But in terms of surface color and brightness Hubble reveals a complex-looking and variegated world with white, dark-orange and charcoal-black terrain. The overall color is believed to be a result of ultraviolet radiation from the distant sun breaking up methane that is present on Pluto's surface, leaving behind a dark and red carbon-rich residue.

...

The images, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, are invaluable to planning the details of the New Horizons flyby in 2015. New Horizons will pass by Pluto so quickly that only one hemisphere will be photographed in the highest possible detail. Particularly noticeable in the Hubble image is a bright spot that has been independently noted to be unusually rich in carbon monoxide frost. It is a prime target for New Horizons. "Everybody is puzzled by this feature," says Buie. New Horizons will get an excellent look at the boundary between this bright feature and a nearby region covered in pitch-black surface material.

And a new URL for the Tombaugh window

http://www.uuchurchlc.org/WP/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Window-Tombaugh1.jpg

Is that Alan Whicker on the potter's wheel, far right panel?

I heard Gordon Brown is going to upgrade it back to a class, despite what the regulatory committee say... no wait, that's cannabis, not Pluto

same thing.

http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/s720x720/536805_10151697980690066_882680065_23939488_573696251_n.jpg

(Yes, I know it's not Nasa who downgraded Pluto. Still, I like to think Pluto struts around with this kind of attitude.)

http://www.redorbit.com/media/uploads/2012/09/pluto-charon.jpg

Gemini Observatory Takes Sharpest Ground-Based Images Ever Of Pluto And Charon

Pluto, the dwarf planet (ex-number-nine), and its larger companion Charon, recently posed for astronomers. Using the high-resolution Gemini North 8-meter telescope along with reconstructive speckle imaging, astronomers were able to capture the twin extrasolar planetary system, providing the sharpest ground-based images of the deep-space dwellers.

The images prove that ground-based speckle imaging is a powerful tool for exoplanet discoveries. The data received also verified previous orbital characteristics for the twin system and revealed precise diameters for each.

“The Pluto-Charon result is of timely interest to those of us wanting to understand the orbital dynamics of this pair for the 2015 encounter by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft,” said Steve Howell of the NASA Ames Research Center, who led the study.

NASA Unveils First Close-up of Pluto
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-JN955_PLUTO0_P_20150724131944.jpg