Pluto - Planet or Moon?

Pluto - Planet or Moon?

  • Planet

    Votes: 15 50.0%

  • Moon

    Votes: 5 16.7%

  • Neither

    Votes: 10 33.3%
  • Total voters
    30
aussie1st

aussie1st

Retired Administrator
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By Matt Stearns
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Friday, August 11, 2006

It's been that way for generations, since a Kansas farm boy with a passion for astronomy discovered Pluto, the ninth planet.

But soon, there could be only eight. Pluto faces demotion.

At a conference in Prague later this month, the International Astronomical Union, which oversees such matters, is scheduled to consider a resolution that defines a planet.

Driven largely by controversy over the status of Pluto, which doesn't share several key attributes of the solar system's eight other planets, the resolution could mean Pluto's dismissal from that select group.
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Instead, it could be defined as simply one of thousands of small, icy objects in the decidedly less glamorous Kuiper Belt, just beyond Neptune.

An alternative would be to maintain Pluto's planetary credentials, but that potentially opens the door to dozens more planets.
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Read the full article - http://www.poststar.com/articles/2006/08/11/news/doc44dc7fdfc04d0674925434.txt

It'll be interesting seeing what happens from this. If it is left as a planet we could have more than 10 planets in our solar system. If not we lose a planet.
 
Ah the long debate continues. I'd say pluto is a moon or a planetoid at best. It can always be replaced by Sedna though.
 
I'd like to keep Pluto as a planet, but it probably isn't one in reality.
 
i want it to be counted a moon so they need to think up a new acrostic poem thing (cant remember the correct name for it)

my very easy method just speeds up naming planets, oh wait, thats a moon,


*head explodes*

i always suspected there was something dody about pluto when i learnt it sometimes comes closer to the sun than neptune
 
What will really make your head explode is the Earth actually has 2 moons! Infact it may actually have 5!!!
 
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Kev said:
What will really make your head explode is the Earth actually has 2 moons!
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really?


this other one better actually be made of cheese

wallace and gromit got my hopes up so much


but seriously is that true? and how come we cant see the other one, is it something to do with it never having ligth form the sun on it? so its in permanent lunar eclipse?
 
Cruithne the 'second' moon is only 5km in diameter and 30 times as far away as the moon
 
can things orbit the moon? if so what are they called?


theoretically if planets orbit the sun, and moons orbit the planets, without getting pulled towards the sun, its possible for something to orbit a moon without getting pulled towards the planet
 
The moon only has a tiny gravitational field but yes it is possible for an object to orbit the moon.
 
No, definitely not. Pluto doesn't orbit Neptune, as it would have to be a moon. I think it wouldn't be called a moon, or if it was it would be of the Sun. Like your first post said, its probably going to become "one of thousands of small, icy objects".
 
Good point, that would be a sad way to chuck off one of our former planets. BTW what happened to that 10th planet people were going on about? I'm sure it was big enough to be called a planet.
 
It certainly wouldn't be classed as a moon, as it orbits the sun. Pluto is smaller than seven moons, including our own.

It may be demoted to just an ordaniary Kuiper belt object, or they may have a new category of planetoid or something similar. 2003 UB313, which is larger than Pluto, would probably join Pluto in that category, with a snazzier name of course. Another possibility is that Pluto and it's main moon Charon are classed as a binary planet, as it does appear that they orbit each other, rather than Charon orbitting Pluto.

And the Earth has only one moon. Cruithne and the three other objects are asteroids that orbit the sun. Due to a strange quirk in their oribts, they appear to be in a horseshoe orbit around the Earth, but they do not orbit it.
 
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