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Thread: Poor Pluto gets no respect. |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 15
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David Autumns
Ace Cruncher UK Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Post Count: 11062 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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 If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands - Douglas Adams Sure looks like a Planet and one of it's moons to me Pluto and Charon are in fact binary planets orbiting a point between them as they wobble through space http://www.space.com/28545-pluto-charon-wobbl...-double-planet-video.html If you think this means Pluto is not a planet, think again. the Earth and our Moon are exactly the same it's just that point around which we wobble with the moon, the barycentre, is 1700Km beneath the surface of the Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter Pluto is a Planet and should be acknowledged as such after the amazing success of NASA with the New Horizons flyby New Horizons is currently 4,794,680,000 Kilometres away (2,980,650,000 miles) ! update - http://www.space.com/30048-new-pluto-color-im...eric-discovery-video.html  [Edit 1 times, last edit by David Autumns at Jul 26, 2015 8:41:51 AM] |
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I was watching a couple of "live" documentaries about Pluto when the first pictures started coming back and found out that only about 5% of the IAU membership actually voted on the status of Pluto.
----------------------------------------In addition, the IAU isn't qualified to make this determination. According the documentaries, the appropriate body would be a group of planetary scientists since that is their specialty. Finally they made the point that the criteria from IAU as to what is a planet doesn't even make all that much sense. So the IAU not only didn't have anything approaching a quorum but it can be argued that they didn't even know what they were doing since this isn't their primary field of expertise and couldn't even come up with a workable definition of "planet."   |
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alged
Master Cruncher FRANCE Joined: Jun 12, 2009 Post Count: 2369 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Thks for all these links News Horizons is a sucessful mission
----------------------------------------Luck for us that Earth has only one Moon to "wobble" with and the protection of big planets at distance. Even Jupiter is wobbling with the Sun contributing to the stabilisation of the whole solar system There are more and more wonders ahead!  |
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David Autumns
Ace Cruncher UK Joined: Nov 16, 2004 Post Count: 11062 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Hi twilyth
----------------------------------------The last bit where the planet has to hoover up in it's local vicinity is hardly fair (and having seen Pluto this is the only criteria it fails on) The place where it is is the Kuiper Belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt Some places are dustier than others :-) Dave |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
At 2KB modem speed "The New Horizons mission will continue to send data stored in its onboard recorders back to Earth through late 2016. The spacecraft currently is 7.6 million miles (12.2 million kilometers) beyond Pluto, healthy and flying deeper into the Kuiper Belt."
Some amazing images of the atmosphere from the looking back towards pluto, backlit by the sun: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-new...haze-flowing-ice-on-pluto |
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