Pluto Demoted, Now A Dwarf Planet

In the second grade I won a blue ribbon in the city-wide Science Fair with a model of the solar system. At the time it included Pluto, but even then you could tell it was very different from the other planets. It’s orbit intersected that of Neptune, and it was so far from the sun that it took 247.7 Earth years to complete a cycle and it was tilted 17.5° from the plane of the other planets. Quite an odd-ball, little Pluto, but since it was named after one of my favorite Disney characters I loved it. Later I found its name came from Pluto ruler of the underworld, a name given it back in 1930.

For years there has been a question as to whether Pluto is a planet or something else, and finally the International Astronomical Union made the call. Pluto, along with its moon Charon as well as Ceres and Xena are "Dwarf Planets". Guess I will have to give the blue ribbon back.

The strange thing is that there is a public cry against demoting Pluto. Rather than accept the wisdom of people who make their living studying the universe, people want Pluto a planet because they like it. And least you think this is the product of too many home-schooled Americans, it’s worldwide. What difference does it make? Pluto is still there, in fact NASA has a spacecraft traveling there right now. It’s still a very interesting object and better to spend time studying it than debating its status in our definition of a planet.

My hope is that perhaps this will get a few more kids interested in astronomy, if for no other reason than to learn enough to prove Pluto deserves planethood after all.