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When I was attending NMSU in Las Cruces, I took a first year Astronomy course. One day, during the course of the semester, my buddy and I found ourselves having to see the instructor. We had missed a class due to 'research' that had kept us out late in Juarez the night before. On our way in to give our mea culpas before our instructor, we passed an open door. The office beyond was lit by a dust glowing shaft of light, and impossibly filled with old texts, literally from floor to ceiling. At the center was a massive desk covered in stacks of additional books and papers. Sitting at the desk, quietly working was an old gentleman who seemed fairly engrossed in what he was going about. We repented before our instructor and picked up our 'catch up' assignments and I couldn't help but ask about the gentleman in the room. She said "Oh, that's Clyde. He discovered Pluto. Ask him if he's not busy, and you can talk to him about it.".
As it turned out, he was busy that day, but he remembered me and my interest a while later when we crossed paths and ending up signing my astronomy text near the section describing his discovery. He also discovered a bunch of asteroids and stayed in 'Cruces after he retired. He passed away there and when I heard the news about NM fighting to re-instate Pluto's status, I immediately thought of the honorable nod it would give to Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of planet X (Pluto) and in the end...a New Mexican.
A big part of the reclassification had to due with discoveries of additional objects in the same size range and region of space. Their composition more closely resembled comets than planets.
How is the line between planets and moons blurred? I was under the impression that a moon orbited a planet. Unless you're saying that planets should technically be "moons" of their star.
Yeah, I guess you could make that argument too, regarding orbiting the star. I guess everything is orbiting something, in a way.
I think sometimes people also think of moons/planets in terms of size, and since Pluto is so small, it didn't measure up. I mean, look at some of Jupiter & Saturn's moons...some of them dwarf Pluto, don't they? And I forget which one, but isn't either Io or Titan potentially life-supporting? [I think that was even the plot in A Space Odyssey:2010, where the mission terraformed the planet into one habitable by mankind]
Yeah, I guess you could make that argument too, regarding orbiting the star. I guess everything is orbiting something, in a way.
I think sometimes people also think of moons/planets in terms of size, and since Pluto is so small, it didn't measure up. I mean, look at some of Jupiter & Saturn's moons...some of them dwarf Pluto, don't they? And I forget which one, but isn't either Io or Titan potentially life-supporting? [I think that was even the plot in A Space Odyssey:2010, where the mission terraformed the planet into one habitable by mankind]
Several of the gas giant moons are potentially habitable for certain extreme organisms. Io (Jupiter) and Enceladus (Saturn) both have liquid water underneath their surfaces, and Titan has several of the prereqs for what is considered life-bearing.
Problem I have with Pluto being a planet is that the Kuiper Belt (which begins right around where Pluto orbits) is full of objects with the same composition, with at least one for sure being bigger than Pluto (Eris), and a lot more likely to be discovered as telescopes improve.
Plus, if the only criteria is that it orbits the sun and it has a strong enough gravitational field to make it round, why isn't Ceres (in the asteroid belt) a planet?
CJ: Both Ceres and Pluto are considered 'dwarf planets'. They aren't big enough to be full-fledged planets, and since they don't orbit anything other than the Sun, they aren't moons. It has been decided that Ceres is too big to be just an asteroid, though it's not nearly as big as Pluto.
I used to have a 10-inch reflecting telescope that I saw Pluto with. The only way I could tell it was Pluto and not a dim star was to see it successive nights and trace its movement, the way that Tombaugh discovered it (although he used a 'blink comparator' to compare photographs, while I just did it visually). I wish I still had that telescope, and the less light-polluted sky of the time (late 1970s).
> Plus, if the only criteria is that it orbits the sun and it has a strong
> enough gravitational field to make it round, why isn't Ceres
> (in the asteroid belt) a planet?
Because Ceres is a foo-foo name that comes from the goddess of beauty
and makeup and pedicures.
Pluto is a "butch" name that comes from the god of the dead.
> Plus, if the only criteria is that it orbits the sun and it has a strong
> enough gravitational field to make it round, why isn't Ceres
> (in the asteroid belt) a planet?
Because Ceres is a foo-foo name that comes from the goddess of beauty
and makeup and pedicures.
Pluto is a "butch" name that comes from the god of the dead.
Ceres = whimp
Pluto = stud
So how do you explain the planet Venus?
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