What if?

[Unseen]

Davis wrote:

Pluto is just simply awesome and for its awesomeness alone it should be a planet.

Then there are some moons of the interior planets that are also planets based on their awesomeness.

Let’s face it, since our moon is bigger than Pluto, Earth+Moon might be called a dual-planet system.

[Davis]

I would have no problem considering the Earth and Moon a dual planet system. The Moon is bloody awesome…always has been. Always will be.

[Gary Bergeron]

If Pluto is a planet, then so is Eris, which is more massive than Pluto.
Are there other bodies out there as massive or more massive than Eris? Possibly so.
The IAU made new interpretations on what is a planet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet

I have a nostalgic urge to think of Pluto as a planet, but the science guys have a better argument…

[Unseen]

Gary Bergeron wrote:

I have a nostalgic urge to think of Pluto as a planet, but the science guys have a better argument…

Call Pluto a planet if you wish. Remember, whether Pluto is a planet or not is only a fact in the sense of how it comes out using a set of standards arrived at by a committee. In other words, a bunch of people got together and compromised on a definition. It’s not a fact in the sense that it’s a phenomenon repeatable in a lab or in the field. It’s not a fact like “all metals expand when heated,” which happens no matter what some committee decides.

[Unseen]

OMG!!! The highest resolution image yet!

[Gregg R Thomas]

I was looking at the pictures and I think I saw Jesus riding a donkey, I almost dropped to my knees and accepted doG, but then I remembered I had just imbibed in some herb…thank doG that was a close one. 🙂

[_Robert_]

I live right down the road from the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral. I can step outside on the patio to watch launches. There is a Delta IV / Satcom mission going up this Wednesday eve.

I really hate getting doused with Hydrazine, LOL.

The space shuttle night returns would always wake us up…The dual sonic booms would really rock the house.

[Davis]

Yeay…we have a new image. It is of a mountain range in the heart shaped area. The mountains approach 2000m. Larger ones have been named Norgay…which I assume are called so because these mountains are similar to Scandinavians who bat for their own team. Pluto pride!

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

I hope you can view this wherever you all are on this planet. Also a report from Stephen Colbert.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 9 months ago by Reg the Fronkey Farmer.

[SteveInCO]

What was the line from the Colbert video? Every day they get a birthday present!

[Strega]

Hey @Davis! Did you see Pluto has a tail!

[Davis]

That is beyond awesome. Thanks for sharing!!!!!!!!!

[Matt]

@Unseen By your logic, we may as well just call everything a “Solar System Object” and be done with it. On the other hand, if you line up all of the original 9 planets and had to pick one that doesn’t fit, I’m fairly sure most people would pick pluto because of it’s weird orbit and inability to clear its orbit of debris. Earth would also be a good pick due to its odd biological contamination, but I think the aforementioned reasons for choosing pluto make a better case for pluto being miscategorised.

[Davis]

AND HERE IT IS! The high resolution image of Pluto…heart and all. Stunningly gorgeous.

Click Here to see it imn zoom-able form.

[SteveInCO]

And here’s the irony…New Frontiers sent back more data on Jupiter (and had far and away the best camera ever sent there) than it will for Pluto, because near Jupiter it was able to transmit much faster, and it could therefore flush its memory buffer and refill it a few times. Pluto is roughly seven times as far away as Jupiter (the ratio is even higher, when Earth is on the side of its orbit closest to Jupiter), so the signal strength is 1/49th there, which is 17dB of additional “free space loss” which means a reduced bandwidth… which here on earth means shitty internet, out there it means waiting forever for data to come in.

Anyhow, all that data from Jupiter? Scientists loved it… but the public paid it no mind whatsoever.

From a dot on a photographic plate, to a picture like this…in a matter of days. It’s still making my head spin, and I do a little happy dance when I think “now we actually know what Pluto looks like. This isn’t fake, this isn’t an artist’s impression, this is actually Pluto. It has mountains made of hard-frozen ice, it has snow fields, it’s mostly pinkish…and we’ve named something after Clyde Tombaugh at last, as his ashes went whizzing by.”

[Author]

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