What the Deal With Pluto?

Question

I know Pluto got kicked out as a planet, but i was watching the Colbert Report a number of months ago and they had a guy on who said that Pluto was back in as a planet. is this true?

Answer 1

Pluto is Goofy's dog.

How can a dog have a pet dog?

Answer 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto
http://www.iau.org/fileadmin/content/pdfs/Resolution_GA26-5-6.pdf

on 24 august 2006, the international astronomical union reclassified pluto.

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

i have been waiting for this since i was about ten when i learned that pluto didn't fit the pattern set by the major bodies in the solar system so it was an anomaly. it just felt "out of place". now that astronomers have found hundreds of other bodies with similar orbits, classifying "134340 pluto" as a planet is even more irrational. i feel somewhat satisfied, but i don't know how long this will drag on tho. many planetary astronomers are satisfied that the definition is rigorous enuf. i can accept that the definition is flawed, but i can not accept that "134340 pluto" is a planet.

this was the right thing to do, believe me. this does not change anything about pluto or the solar system. this just corrects the mistake of classifying pluto as a planet initially.

this same thing happened has happened before. in 1800, an astronomer found a body orbiting the sun between the orbits of mars and jupiter and thought it was a planet. astronomers finally stopped classifying them as planets after they found several other bodies with similar orbits, and no one thinks ceres, pallas, juno, and vesta are planets today.

many astronomers consider pluto and charon to be a binary system, but two small bodies orbit that system. they are called nix and hydra.

incidentally, "134340 pluto" was never a moon of neptune. neptune did capture triton. this is why triton has a retrograde orbit

Answer 3

No that is definitely not true. First off, Pluto was of by 17 degrees of the equitorial plane of the sun. Second, pluto was captured with an eccentric orbit around the sun. Oh and the planet off pluto was kicked off only like 3 months ago off the solar system.

Answer 4

Pluto never was a real planet not only because of its small size, but mainly because its orbit was highly inclined to the rest of the planets' and so eccentric that it is actually closer to the sun than Neptune part of the time. It's a Kuiper belt object, one of thousands if not millions of bodies floating around aimlessly (all right, they do have orbits) so far away from the sun that it looks like just another star.from that distance.

At some point you just have to draw the line between full-fledged planet and mere space debris. Besides, removing Pluto makes the solar system nice and symmetrical again, with four small, rocky planets close to the sun and four gas giants farther away.

Answer 5

pluto is not a planet. This is because a planet can't just be huge rocks flying around together in the same orbit. For the past few years, pluto being a planet has been under debate. This past year, it has been officially excluded. There are now only 8 planets.

Answer 6

Pluto is still a minor planet and will remain that way, It is a small ball of ice that has less mass then some of the moons around Jupiter. So put simply yes it is a plant but a minor not a major like mars or Neptune.

Answer 7

Our school's cross country team got t-shirts printed (at their own expense) for meets that said Save Pluto on the front and Lose Uranus on the back!!!! I think the whole kick Pluto out thing was a marketing scam. I hope Pluto is back I would hate to go back to 4th grade to re-learn the planets.................

Answer 8

You need to look at the IAU (International Astronomical Union) definition of planet to see why Pluto is now defined as a **dwarf** planet

First, why does Pluto not fit the IAU planet defintion?

(1) A "planet"1 is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

Pluto fails in "c". Personally, I think "neighborhood" should be definined in terms of an orbital dynamics phase space since it never comes close to Neptune due to the 3:2 resonance of their orbits: my opinion and $3.95 will get you decaf latte at Starbucks. (Hmm... Neptune has not cleared Pluto out of ITS orbit either. . . maybe they know about some other icy bodies in Pluto's orbit?)

Pluto DOES meet the qualifications for a dwarf planet.
(2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape2, (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

http://www.iau.org/iau0602.423.0.html

Answer 9

Is a micro planet and I agree.I believe that the moons of Europa, Callisto or Titan have more characteristics of a planet, including the possibility of life, than Pluto or even Mercury. Who cares is the object is orbiting a star or a giant gas planet.

Answer 10

minor or major what? all planets has certain atributes and frankly pluto hardly has any. it's hard to define what a planet is, but it has to have a certain orbit which pluto dosent, it has to be a certain size and its unsure if pluto is the right size infact its smaller then some moons. pluto is simply a large comet that got sucked into the sun's orbit because it dosent have one.

Answer 11

ahhhh....a fellow Clobert follower! great! pluto isn't a true planet anymore. the IAU demoted pluto from planetary status to a class called dwarf planets.