pluto a planet?

Question

what do u think about pluto is it a planet or not(help with homework)

Answer 1

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.

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.

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 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 2

When Pluto was first discovered it was thought by some to be bigger than the Earth. Since then better measurements have shown it to be much, much smaller. Recently more objects about the same size have been found. They were really too small to be called planets but since they were around the same size as Pluto, either they had to be called planets or Pluto had to be demoted to be consistent. At the recent meeting of the International Astronomical Union the non-unanimous vote was that it was no longer to be called a planet.

The science that is taught in elementary and high schools is a piddling fraction of what is known. What school textbooks say is not the concern of practicing scientists.

Scientists reclassify things all the time as better information comes in. Usually they reclassify bacteria, plants or sometimes animals or rocks. This almost never makes the news even though it is more likely to be important to us because these things are here on Earth.

Pluto is a very long way away and as recently as 1929 nobody even knew it was there. So whether it is called a planet or "Egbert" is neither here nor there.

The only people who have a right to have an opinion on this are those with detailed knowledge of the solar system and astronomical classification schemes. What anybody else thinks actually does not count.

Answer 3

It's no longer a planet. It was removed from that status earlier this year by an international convention of scientific bickering bozos.

They were sort of right to, had they continued to include Pluto they would have had to include several other objects in the solar system that, by the deffinition used to justify Pluto, would have to be included too.

Still, it's a ball hanging out past Neptune with a moon and an orbit that really isn't that messed up.

Let them say it's not a planet, but I really don't think they're going to be printing new text books.

Answer 4

Pluto (IPA: /ˈpluːtəʊ/), designated (134340) Pluto in the Minor Planet Center catalogue, is the second-largest known dwarf planet in the solar system. It orbits between 29 and 49 AU from the Sun, and was the first Kuiper Belt Object to be discovered. Approximately one-fifth the mass of the Earth's Moon, Pluto is primarily composed of rock and ice. It has an eccentric orbit that is highly inclined with respect to the planets and takes it closer to the Sun than Neptune during a portion of its orbit. Pluto and its largest satellite, Charon, could be considered a binary system because they are closer in size than any of the other known planetoid/moon combinations in the solar system, and because the barycentre of their orbits does not lie within either body. However, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has yet to formalize a definition for binary dwarf planets, so Charon is regarded as a moon of Pluto. Two smaller moons, Nix and Hydra, were discovered in 2005. Pluto is smaller than several of the natural satellites or moons in our solar system (see the list of solar system objects by radius).

From its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Pluto was considered the ninth planet from the Sun. In the late 20th and early 21st century, many similar objects were discovered in the outer solar system, most notably the Trans-Neptunian object Eris which is slightly larger than Pluto. In August 2006 the IAU redefined the term "planet", and classified Pluto, Ceres, and Eris as dwarf planets.[1] Pluto is also classified as the prototype of a family of trans-Neptunian objects.[2][3] After the reclassification, Pluto was added to the list of minor planets and given the number 134340.[4][5]

You could get more information from the link below...

Answer 5

Pluto is not a planet, it is not a large comet, and according to cheasy123's definition of a planet, then all the asteroids in the solar system would have to be classified as planets as well.

according to astronomers, Pluto is now a dwarf planet, but if you ask me pluto is a large asteroid

Answer 6

It's not a planet anymore. But in my own personal opinion it is not a planet because if you consider that Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus are all gas planets, why is Pluto a solid ice planet? When the solar system formed dense material migrated inward toward the sun, while lighter gases, and various other debris remained beyond the asteroid belt. So how did Pluto form? I my opinion Pluto is nothing more than a giant comet. There are thousands of comets in our solar system, and Pluto is another one of them.

Answer 7

The International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto was no longer a planet. The reason is that while Pluto is round, orbits the sun, and has three moons, it has not cleared (via gravity) its own orbit of debris. Instead, they decided to classify it as a "dwarf planet".

See the details below.

RESOLUTION 5A
The IAU therefore resolves that "planets" and other bodies in our Solar System, except satellites, be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1) A "planet" [footnote 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.

(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) shape [footnote 2] , (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

(3) All other objects [footnote 3] except satellites orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar-System Bodies".


Footnote 1: The eight "planets" are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Footnote 2: An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either dwarf planet and other categories.

Footnote 3: These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.

RESOLUTION 6A
The IAU further resolves:

Pluto is a "dwarf planet" by the above definition and is recognized as the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects.

Answer 8

If Pluto were to be considered a planet, we'd have to include other things orbiting near it that are also round, such as Eris (formerly 2003UB_313 aka "Xena") which is larger than Pluto, Sedna, and Quaoar. I might like to see this in a new category of planets called icy planets or plutinos, to fit with the other two categories of rocky/terrestrial and gas giant/jovian.

We'd also have include Ceres and Vespa though, which are asteroids large enough to be spherical, and I'm not sure if they really fit the category of rocky planets.

Answer 9

According to the international astronomers association, Pluto is now labelled a "dwarf planet", along with Eris (Pluto's larger cousin in the Kuiper belt) and Ceres (the largest asteroid, located in the belt between Mars and Jupiter).

There are now only 8 official planets in our system.

What do I think? Too bad I guess, but what we call a world is not as important as what that world is like - what's on it, is there life, what interesting things are there, etc.

Answer 10

a planet,in the news pluto is just removed from the solar system but considered as a dwarf planel,still a planet.