Uranus is taking a battering

Astronomers thrilled by extreme storms on Uranus

Mmmmmmm

Good to see that Pluto may be reinstated as a planet. About time as well.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/shor ... lanet-size

As far as I'm concerned, Pluto has always been a planet, and always will be.

It's a big round thing that orbits a star. What else is it going to be?

Graveyard76 wrote:As far as I'm concerned, Pluto has always been a planet, and always will be.

It's a big round thing that orbits a star. What else is it going to be?

I know.

Dwarf planet just doesn't hack it.


Mind you, pluto is smaller than our moon, and we don't call the moon a planet. Still........

Planets orbit stars, moons orbit planets. That's how I've always thought it works.

Mmmm

Yet some moons are larger than planets.


And there may be more planets/ dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt apart from Eris, Humea and Makemake.


Btw, Eris is actually larger than Pluto.

Yeah, there are many other objects out there past Neptune, the same size as Pluto, orbiting the sun as well. That's why they reclassified it as a dwarf planet. There's nothing particularly special about it. Except for the fact that it has a moon that's almost as big as itself. Which is kind of cool.


It's hard to let go of Pluto's planet status though, growing up, I always learned it was a planet.

Pluto should be reinstated as a planet.

And Eris should be the 10th planet.

As this appears to be becoming the astronomy thread, did you know that the dwaf planet Ceres may contain more water than the earth.

http://www.space.com/22891-ceres-dwarf-planet.html

New Horizons Spacecraft set for Pluto flypast on 15th July 2015.