Plutopalooza July 14

^ I've been following this a lot. Why? For most of my life it's just a blip too far to know in detail. Besides, it was considered a proper planet. 85 years after Neptune was discovered, Pluto was discovered, but much later Voyager II would reveal it was not responsible for the discrepancies predicting planetary orbits....it was the wrong estimate of Neptune's mass. 85 years after it's discovery, we finally have a chance to see and monitor Pluto for about a half day. Why not orbit the $728M probe? Sadly, the 1000-pound craft would hardly be slowed by the tiny world's gravity or thin atmosphere - it would take a million pounds of fuel to break this craft into an orbit. So it will speed in front of Pluto on July 14 like many drivers speed across the tracks before a train strikes.

Kind of amazing about the pictures. Going at 31,000 mph with lighting equivalent to twilight, it's going to beam pictures that will take 5.5 hours to reach Earth....the entire data may take over year to send back.

Poor Pluto. Thought to be Earth-sized, the estimates shrunk as telescopes got better, then a lot smaller when the double-planet (?) Charon discovered in 1978 allowed a better estimate to be made that's it's smaller than our Moon. Then some of the many objects Gerard Kuiper predicted beyond Neptune were found in the 90's - some possibly larger than Pluto (Eris, Make Make....) So after Clyde Tombaugh (who found Pluto in 1930) died and New Horizons launched, astronomers made a formal definition of a planet. Because Pluto occasionally intrudes on the orbital turf of Neptune - it's disqualified and officially a dwarf planet.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Where-is-New-Horizons/index.php#

 

I'd be irked if I had been downgraded to a dimensionally-challenged planet. It would be really understandable if the flyby revealed the local natives have put up a "Yankee Go Home" sign.

 

It's still a planet as far as I'm concerned.

 

Pluto doesn't care. The categories are purely human constructs. Like the concept of species. By the definition, animals that we have grouped into different groups as species shouldn't be able to successful breed. That hasn't stopped dogs and coyotes, cats and bobcats, and the various sunfish in North American ponds.

 

The transmission rate from New Horizons is 1 kilobit per second - your dial-up modem was 56x faster @ 56K. Takes 42 minutes to transmit a 1024x1024 pixel image, then 5.5 hours later it's received by a 200-foot dish in Goldstone California, Canberra, or Spain. It will take 16 months to send all the pictures and other data.

Unlike OJ Simpson, Michael Brown explicitly said in a book he killed Pluto How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I think he could be convicted for murder.

 

Nor Neanderthal and Humans.

 

On (your) Wednesday there should be one new Pluto image. More will trickle in much later because of the bandwidth thing mentioned above.

Is Pluto a planet? Heck yeah. Along with many other sol-orbiting bodies that have yet to be identified. Rocks with more or less water and methane ice. On what basis would we define the 'floor'?

 

Yes there is now a 10th "planet" Eris which is 25% bigger than Pluto, so if they kept Pluto as a planet we would have 10 planets now. Science is funny: Tombaugh set out to find Planet X (which was an erroneous miscalc) but he found it anyways, right about where it was thought to be hiding.

Gotta have heart: who knew Pluto had a heart!

 

It's 14 planets if you think dwarf planets shouldn't exist as a category.
Dwarf planet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I find Ceres the most interesting since it is 'pretty close' in the asteroid belt past Mars.

 

Released July 14, 2015

 

There's a picture of Pluto on Pluto...do you see it? (courtesy SpaceWeather.com)

 

Looks like a planet to me. Clearly the decision to define this as other than a planet was human egos. It could have been easily "grandfathered in" going forward. There is only about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (give or take some large factor) orbiting bodies in this galaxy left to argue over the planet classifications.

 

...it does look like a planet, doesn't it?

 

Not dead yet
New Horizons: Spacecraft survives Pluto encounter - BBC News

 

Defining planets as 'Hoovering' debris within their orbital paths sounds OK. I see no evidence that Pluto has fallen short. Let's re-planet this sucka.

 

It hasn't 'Hoovered' Neptune out of the way, and isn't going to. OK, Neptune hasn't finished the job on Pluto either, but is unlikely to lose.

Whatever, I believe the era of '9 planets' is dead. The number of planets in our system can be just 8, or it can be at least 14 and likely growing quickly, but nothing in between makes sense anymore. Maybe even nearby Ceres could petition of join.

 

You under appreciate what is at stake here. In 5th grade I debated that no further planets after Pluto would be discovered and nine planets was the final number. No way I'm acquiescing to a planetary renumbering without renumeration.

 

Useful info- don't walk on Pluto (gravity too small)
Mercury and Pluto