Pluto IS a Planet.

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, Gina said:

Didn't think tribbles had ears!  No sign of eyes either as I recall.

It's trying to pass incognito.

[LukeSkywatcher]

On 01/09/2019 at 14:53, johnturley said:

How many objects would you classify as being planets if Pluto was classified as a planet again.

You would have to include Eris (whose discovery was partly responsible for Pluto's declassification) and possibly also Makemake and Haumea, and with new discoveries the list would continue to grow.

You have to remember that when Pluto was first discovered it was thought to be around the same size as the earth, this later got revised downwards to around 3,600 miles in diameter (still larger than Mercury) and more recently to around 2,000 miles (smaller than our moon).

John 

They are asteroids.

[LukeSkywatcher]

On 05/09/2019 at 18:02, Gina said:

Ah yes...  That's Pluto!  Doesn't look much like a planet.

I thought his name was Bluto.

[saac]

Planet is an arbitrary classification , the Universe does not care. I can't really get excited about an artificial label , it is what it is irrespective of whatever label we happen to place on it.

Jim 

[JamesF]

7 minutes ago, saac said:

Planet is an arbitrary classification , the Universe does not care. I can't really get excited about an artificial label , it is what it is irrespective of whatever label we happen to place on it.

Jim 

That is largely my feeling, too.

James

[Paul M]

The tag line from one of the late, great Richard Feynman's better known anecdotes: "I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something".

So long as we know Pluto we don't need to classify it ( or is that "them")

Pluto, for me, has not lost any of its wonder. I still want to hunt it down one day, preferably visually (!) But more likely digitally. Re live the excitement that Clyde Tombaugh felt when he first identified it.

 

 

[johnturley]

Originally Pluto was tracked down by Clyde Tombaugh based on calculations by Percival Lowell, which were based upon perturbations in the orbit of the planet Uranus, and to have these measured effects, the mass of Pluto was calculated to be similar to that of the earth. Now we know that the mass of Pluto is less than one hundredth of that of the earth, it could not possibly have had these gravitational effects on Uranus, and its discovery is now put down to a lucky coincidence.

John 

[Stub Mandrel]

11 hours ago, LukeSkywatcher said:

I thought his name was Bluto.

Bluto was the original name for Brutus in the Popeye cartoons 🙂