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Help Save Pluto. "I'm always going to think of Pluto as a planet," "We still believe in Pluto." "The public has certainly supported Pluto as a planet" "Pluto has always been a planet since it was discovered in 1930." "Astrologically Pluto's impact is immeasurable." "An Obsolete nine-planet solar system? No Way!" Show your SUPPORT! Save Pluto! The Controversy The Chicago Tribune reports there were 2,500 astronomers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) convention in Prague, but just 300 of them voted. Read their editorial here. The IAU shook up the solar system Thursday, August 24, 2006, when it declared that Pluto was no longer part of the cosmic club — the first time the solar system was altered since Pluto was identified in 1930. The quandary began in 1992, when astronomers began to search for and find objects in the so-called Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune's orbit, at the far reaches of the solar system. Scientists now recognize 800 Kuiper Belt objects, and some rival or surpass Pluto's size. Recent efforts have also included a proposal to increase the number of Planets, but then the number of planets could skyrocket. THe IAU declared that: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit, so it's out of the club; too big to be an asteroid and too strange and small and far away to be a planet. Culture should hold a special place for Pluto, at least for students since 1930 who were taught about it, but science has moved on. (Why this doesn't rule out Neptune is anybody's guess since it also intersect's Pluto's orbit.) Show your SUPPORT! Save Pluto! Pluto is the ninth planet from the Sun in our solar system. Its traditional symbol is a combination of the name's first two letters, "P-L", which are also Percival Lowell's initials, although some prefer a different symbol resembling that of Neptune but with a circle in the top center for the middle spoke. (The Glyph of Pluto). Pluto also represents a Roman undergod and Astrologically is associated with reproductive systems. Discovery & Naming Pluto was discovered by the astronomer Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona on February 18, 1930 when he compared photographic plates taken on January 23 and 29. After the observatory obtained confirming photographs, the news of the discovery was telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory on March 13, 1930. The planet was later found on photographs dating back to March 19, 1915. Tombaugh was searching for a "Planet X" to explain discrepancies in the predicted orbit of Neptune. It is now known these discrepancies were an artifact of the slightly incorrect value then known for the mass of Neptune. In the matter of Pluto the discretion of naming the new object belonged to Lowell Observatory and its director, Vesto Melvin Slipher, who, in the words of Tombaugh, was "urged to suggest a name for the new planet before someone else did". Soon suggestions began to pour in from all over the world. Constance Lowell, Percival's widow who had delayed the search through her lawsuit, proposed Zeus, then Lowell, and finally her own first name, none of which met with any enthusiasm. One young couple even wrote to ask that the planet be named after their newborn child. Mythological names were much to the fore: Cronus and Minerva (proposed by the New York Times, unaware that it had been proposed for Uranus some 150 years earlier) were high on the list. Also there were Artemis, Athene, Atlas, Cosmos, Hera, Hercules, Icarus, Idana, Odin, Pax, Persephone, Perseus, Prometheus, Tantalus, Vulcan, Zymal, and many more. One complication was that many of the mythological names had already been allotted to the numerous asteroids. Virtually all the female names had been used up, and male names were usually reserved for objects with unusual orbits. The name retained for the planet is that of the Roman god Pluto, and it is also intended to evoke the initials of the astronomer Percival Lowell, who predicted that a planet would be found beyond Neptune. The name was first suggested by Venetia Burney, at the time an eleven-year-old girl from Oxford, England. Over the breakfast table, one morning her grandfather, who worked at Oxford University's Bodleian Library, was reading about the discovery of the new planet in the Times newspaper. He asked his grandaughter what she thought would be good name for it. Venetia thought that as it was so cold and so distant it should be named after the Roman God of the underworld. This idea was mentioned by her grandfather to a former Astronomer Royal who cabled his astronomer colleagues in America. After favourable consideration which was almost unanimous, the name Pluto was officially adopted and an announcement made by Slipher on May 1, 1930.
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