Is Pluto a planet?

Question

Some of the moons of Jupiter are bigger than Pluto, even a Asteroid is bigger than Pluto. Should Pluto be still considered as a planet?

Interesting answers... I guess is has to do a lot of what the definition of planet really is. Stevewca not everyone gets the news at the same time especially people from another country. I just found out , so why did you bother to answer?

Answer 1

pluto is not a planet. pluto and charon are considered a binary system, but two small bodies orbit this system. they are called nix and hydra. this does not change anything about the solar system or pluto. it just corrects the mistake of classifying pluto as a planet initially.

http://www.iau.org/fileadmin/content/pdfs/Resolution_GA26-5-6.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Ceres
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_%28dwarf_planet%29

pluto orbits the sun, is round, does not have an isolated orbit (a bunch of other similar bodies have similar orbits.), and is not a satellite so it is a dwarf planet.

this same thing has happened before. beginning in 1800, astronomers found a few bodies orbiting between the orbits of mars and jupiter, and they finally stopped calling them planets after the fourth discovery. astronomers then added numerals to the names, and pluto recently got its numeral. 150 years from now, no one will think of "134340 pluto" as a planet. very few will even know we classified it as a planet. "1 ceres" and "136199 eris" are other dwarf planets. "1 ceres" is the biggest asteroid, but it is less than half the size of "134340 pluto". "136199 eris" seems to be about five percent bigger than "134340 pluto".

i have been waiting for this since i was about twelve. i feel somewhat satisfied. i knew that pluto didn't fit the pattern set by the major bodies in the solar system so it was an anomaly. it just felt illogical and "out of place". this was the right thing to do, believe me. i don't understand why so many are having such a problem with this.

i don't know how long this will drag on tho. many planetary scientists are not satisfied that the definition is rigorous enough.

Answer 2

Pluto should be considered a planet.

Pluto orbits the the Sun and not a planet, so it cant be a moon. Also, although the asteroid belt revolves around the Sun, asteroids are small fragments of rocks believed to be space junk from collisions and previous planets and can be seen a what was once a planet or just simply space fragments.

Pluto far away from the Sun is a lone mass that is traveling in it's own orbit without nearby significant objects tagging along. For these reasons, Pluto had been seen as a planet for many many years and simply giving it the "brush off" as being to insignificant is unjustified.

Answer 3

Pluto, the last planet to join the heavenly pantheon, became the first to leave it. The status of Pluto had been under discussion for some time, but with the discovery of 2003 UB313, nicknamed Xena, the question became acute, for it seemingly had as much right as Pluto to be called a planet.

On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union surprised the world by voting in a new definition of planet, one that would exclude Pluto and bring the total number down to eight. (There had previously been been strong speculation that the redefinition would bring the total up to 12 instead of down.)

Pluto was instead classified as a dwarf planet, along with Ceres and the aforementioned Xena. The main difference between a dwarf planet and the real thing is that the dwarf variety has not cleared the area of its orbital path.

This redefinition met with a wave of protests from those who wanted to see the ninth planet grandfathered in, including but not limited to supporters of the late Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930. His widow, however, said he would have been accepting of the IAU's decision since "he was a scientist" and understood that astronomers had to take into account newly discovered objects in the Kuiper Belt (where Pluto is located).

But opponents of Pluto's demotion remain unconsoled and have generated a thriving industry in T-shirts, mugs and other memorabilia. Among the many slogans of this movement was one which played on the mnemonic for the names of the erstwhile nine:

"My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums."

Answer 4

In fact 7 moons in all: Callisto, Europa, Ganymede and Io (the largest 4 moons of Jupiter) Titan (the largest moon of Saturn), Triton (the largest moon of Neptune), and our own moon are all larger than Pluto,

As is Eris, the Scattered Disk Object formerly known as Xena which is now classed as a dwarf planet along with Pluto and 1 Ceres, the largest asteroid.

Ceres is smaller than Pluto and there is no asteroid (an object between Mars and Jupiter) bigger than Pluto therefore, but I guess you meant Xena when you said that,

What Wikipedia reports of the recent IAU definition of a planet is interesting as regards size:

It doesn't give a definition of size for planets in our solar system but as regards other stars:

"or within another system,

(i) is in orbit around a star or stellar remnants;
(ii) has a mass below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium; and
(iii) is above the minimum mass/size requirement for planetary status in our solar system."

which rather begs the question of what is that minimum size? Presumably smaller than Mercury but larger than Pluto. But they haven't defined it yet! Seems to me they are hedging their best till they see what else they discover that is larger than Pluto, and then decide where to draw the line.

I agree with Roy, Perhaps Pluto should not have been classed as a planet in the first place.

Pluto was first discovered beyond Neptune in 1930 and was accepted by the IAU (recently formed in 1919) as a planet after it was initially believed to be larger than the Earth. However, after further observation it was found that Pluto was actually much smaller, so it got in under false pretences, as did 1 Ceres in 1801,

It too was found to be disappointingly small after it was proclaimed a planet and Herschel (who had discovered Uranus 20 years previously) coined the term "asteroid" when 2 Pallas was found the following year and was even smaller.

Once 15 asteroids had been discovered and there were then 23 planets, and it was starting to get silly, all the asteroids were demoted from the planet club in 1852. And much the same thing happened to Pluto, a month ago.

This is a table of how the number of accepted planets has altered since 1543 when the Copernican heliocentric model of the Solar System was proposed:

1543 - six (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) (among those who accepted the new view)
1781 - seven (with Uranus)
1807 - eleven (with 1 Ceres, 2 Pallas, 3 Juno and 4 Vesta)
1845 - twelve (with 5 Astraea)
1846 - thirteen (with Neptune)
1851 - twenty-three (with 6 Hebe, 7 Iris, 8 Flora, 9 Metis, 10 Hygiea, 11 Parthenope, 12 Victoria, 13 Egeria, 14 Irene and 15 Eunomia)
1852 - eight (without Ceres and the asteroids)
1930 - nine (with Pluto)
2006 - eight (without Pluto)

The following is a list of other solar system bodies formerly considered planets:

Objects in the sky considered planets in antiquity:
Moon
Sun

The Galilean Moons of Jupiter, called the "Medicean Planets" by their discoverer, Galileo Galilei after their discovery in 1610: (Callisto, Europa, Ganymede and Io)

Several moons of Saturn discovered by Christiaan Huygens and Jean-Dominique Cassini

Titan – referred to as a Planetes novus (new planet) in Huygens' Systema Saturnium

Iapetus and Rhea - both Iapetus and Rhea were called nouvelles planètes (new planets) in Cassini's Découverte de deux nouvelles planetes autour de Saturne

The first 15 asteroids discovered, itemised above.

Pluto

And more recently both Eris (Xena) and Sedna were hailed by the press as new planets on their discovery.

So Pluto is simply the latest in a long line of objects, enthused over on doscovery, about which second thoughts were then had, later.

Answer 5

Guess what? Moons of Jupiter are larger than mercury as well!
Just that Pluto is too far off, and cannot revolve in a simple path without coming in the way of Neptune.

Answer 6

Yes because if you stop and think. There maybe a difference in the surface of an asteroid then Pluto and. The orbit when Neptune and Pluto switch places in orbit temporary.

Answer 7

I even have pluto in the "first homestead' conjunct my ascendant in my chart,and that i've got self belief it rather is power very strongly in my character,because of the fact i'm the type who could be obsessed with issues,and that i've got a tricky time letting issues or people bypass,and whilst i choose some thing i bypass after it with finished stress,and positioned like each little thing into what i choose,and on occasion that scares me somewhat because of the fact i will bypass to extremes plenty that i make myself incredibly much ill which isn't reliable in any respect,yet i do it.I actually have a bent to push myself rather difficult with something that i do,and that i will't stop till i'm getting what i choose all executed or the way i choose it executed.it rather is incredibly much like an all or no longer something attitude with me even however I even have libra as my increasing sign.

Answer 8

no. lately the scientists have defined the term "planet" more specifically, so Pluto falls out if that category and is just one of the many Kuiper Belt Objects.

Answer 9

As far as I'm concerned Pluto is and always will be a planet. Some stuffy ol' astronomer isn't going to change the universe I live in at the drop of a hat!

Answer 10

yes i think pluto is a planet everyone says it isn't but i don't care what they think...i even have a theary that it use to be near earth in other words i mean it use to be a inner planet until it and earth hit each other and when they hit pluto was knocked past neptune and when it hit a picece of earth fell off and became what we now know of as the moon...am i makeing your head hurt cause i'm makeing my own head hurt!