I just heard from a guy who is in Prague for the IAU conference, spending much of his time involved in the whole "what's a planet?" debate. He said the majority of the people at the meeting are opposed to the definition of planet proposed earlier this week because it abolishes the definition of planet which has been used in the last 2500 years or so, and it is in fact not a definition of planet but a mess of sub-definitions and special cases to obtain what some wanted (i.e. Pluto and "Xena" as planets, Pluto-Charon as double planet...) Then I read in Space.Com that another proposal has been put forward that would reclassify Pluto as something called a dwarf planet leaving us with 8 "real" planets (in which case I've been right about agreeing with Brian Marsden and the Hayden all along <grin>). Of course this is going to cause havoc for those publishers and toy makers that are already proceeding with plans to change their products to 12 planets (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-08-16-planets-textbooks_x.ht...). One item (that I think was meant to be funny) I read today noted that since the Moon is receding from the Earth and since the 1st IAU proposal used center of mass to define planethood, then the Moon will eventually be a planet (albeit in a few billion years). And the beat goes on... Patrick p.s. for Utahns, "Planet" Ceres rises about 9 this evening and transits about 1:30 tomorrow morning.
A funny "plutolitical" cartoon: http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/edstein --- Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:
I just heard from a guy who is in Prague for the IAU conference, spending much of his time involved in the whole "what's a planet?" debate.
He said the majority of the people at the meeting are opposed to the definition of planet proposed earlier this week because it abolishes the definition of planet which has been used in the last 2500 years or so, and it is in fact not a definition of planet but a mess of sub-definitions and special cases to obtain what some wanted (i.e. Pluto and "Xena" as planets, Pluto-Charon as double planet...)
Then I read in Space.Com that another proposal has been put forward that would reclassify Pluto as something called a dwarf planet leaving us with 8 "real" planets (in which case I've been right about agreeing with Brian Marsden and the Hayden all along <grin>).
Of course this is going to cause havoc for those publishers and toy makers that are already proceeding with plans to change their products to 12 planets
(http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-08-16-planets-textbooks_x.ht...).
One item (that I think was meant to be funny) I read today noted that since the Moon is receding from the Earth and since the 1st IAU proposal used center of mass to define planethood, then the Moon will eventually be a planet (albeit in a few billion years).
And the beat goes on...
Patrick
p.s. for Utahns, "Planet" Ceres rises about 9 this evening and transits about 1:30 tomorrow morning.
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Aloha Patrick maybe the 9 planets we grew up with should be called 'native planets' ............... aloha Rob PS the dome iso floor gets installed tomorrow at the summit, this is a big step for HAA and the imaging dome upgrade
Hi Patrick I'll post a few of the finished assembly. We thought we could just mount the dome on a 10 ton pier block but in a moderate breeze (here on Haleakala???) we get a very slight shimmy and that just won't work. The tube steel frame floats above the pier block, this should work quite well. More tomorrow Rob
--- Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:
I just heard from a guy . . . <snip all>
The visuals in the IAU press release at - http://www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/iau0601/iau0601_release.html including - The 12 planets http://www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/iau0601/iau0601a.html The 3 new planets http://www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/iau0601/iau0601b.html The candidate planets http://www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/iau0601/iau0601c.html make an easily followed case for the intent behind the classification, as opposed to the nuances of the draft resolution: http://www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/iau0601/iau0601_resolution.html The IAU press release illustration leave out one comparison in the scale between classical planet, plutons, drawf planets and candidate planets - a comparison between Pluto and 2003UB_313 and Charon. 2003US_313 is 4% larger than Pluto. Here's a Wikipedia picture that fills in the missing visual link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2006-16-d-print.jpg - Kurt __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
participants (4)
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Rob Ratkowski Photography