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Does anyone know why Pluto is no longer a planet?

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DocStrange
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01 Feb 2009, 7:11 pm

pakled wrote:
one of the other threads along this line did give the new name of 'Gabrielle', but I don't remember. Something mythological-sounding...;)


There was a thread someone posted about some crazy person who actually believed that an object twice the size of Jupiter passed into Mercury's orbit (with the "evidence video" actually stock footage of a solar flare) in 2000 as a part of a thousand year orbit and will pass by it again in 2012 (as apparently 1000 = 12 now) and the guy proclaimed that a picture of Eris was the object.

Eris and its moon Dysnomia have been orbiting in the Kuiper belt as long as there's been planets and have never moved from their orbits since the orbits formed.

Also, Pluto and Eris are now considered "dwarf planets", along with Ceres (the first asteroid ever discovered, and the largest one in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter) and two other objects in the Kuiper Belt: Haumea and Makemake. Another large object, Sedna orbits in an area outside of the Kuiper Belt, and its orbit goes inside the Oort Cloud, the official end of the Solar System (although the Voyager spacecrafts have passed the heliopause and the limit of the solar wind, they have not passed the farthest parts of Sedna's orbit yet).

Before the descision to demote Pluto, NASA launched the New Horizons probe to study and take pictures of Pluto and its large moon Charon (although i'm not sure about its two recently discovered and very small moons Nix and Hydra) and it will reach it in July 2015.


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robo37
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03 Feb 2009, 1:14 pm

Hears a list of objects that orbit the sun, in order of size: (Planets, Dwarf Planets and Minor Planets)

Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Earth
Venus
Mars
Mercury
Eris
Pluto
90377 Sedna
Makemake
Haumea
2007 OR10
2005 QU182
90482 Orcus
Ceres
2005 UQ513
2007 UK126
50000 Quaoar
28978 Ixion
2002 TX300
2002 AW197



Last edited by robo37 on 03 Feb 2009, 2:12 pm, edited 4 times in total.

twoshots
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03 Feb 2009, 1:23 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Wisguy wrote:
IIRC, it is because a larger-than-pluto KBO was discovered in a highly eccentric orbit outside of that of Pluto. I believe that that is the object that was recently named 'Xena'. That discovery completely muddled Pluto's place in the planet rolls.

Mike


Zena has a small moon which was named Gabrielle.

ruveyn

It's actually called Dysnomia, and Xena's real name is Eris.

Thanks be to the gods.


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pakled
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08 Feb 2009, 1:18 am

yeah..I saw that other thread...;)

shame...I kinda liked the Xena/Gabrielle thing...;)
However, I do hear that Charon, the moon around the 'whatever' Pluto was 'named' after an astronomers' wife, Sharon...;)



DocStrange
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08 Feb 2009, 5:09 pm

pakled wrote:
yeah..I saw that other thread...;)

shame...I kinda liked the Xena/Gabrielle thing...;)
However, I do hear that Charon, the moon around the 'whatever' Pluto was 'named' after an astronomers' wife, Sharon...;)


Charon was the ferryman of the underworld in Greek mythology. It goes with the fact that Pluto is the god of the underworld.


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