Everything Science Forum

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060621/ap_on_sc/pluto_s_moons

Nix and Hydra.   :1thumbup

I noticed this:

This summer, the IAU will debate whether Pluto should remain a planet. The discovery of an icy object slightly larger than Pluto in the Kuiper Belt last year reinvigorated the argument over whether to demote Pluto or add other planets.

Much as I love the stories of Percival Lowell and Clyde Tombaugh and the discovery of Pluto I have to say I've gone over to the side of those who would describe Pluto and its moons as a "coupled system of four Kuiper Belt objects".

Hmmmm - did we miss the uproar about whether or not Pluto is a planet?

More bad news for downgraded Pluto

· Dwarf planet is not even the biggest of its type
· Eris, body that reopened debate, is heavier

Astronomers have announced yet more bad news for the much-lamented former planet Pluto. Kicked out of the club of planets last year into a new category of dwarf planet, it is not even the biggest of those, scientists have found.
The same object that began Pluto's problems, a 1,500-mile-wide dwarf planet called Eris, has been confirmed as bigger and heavier than Pluto.

Using the Hubble space telescope and the Keck observatory in Hawaii, scientists used measurements of the orbit of Dysnomia, one of the satellites of Eris, to calculate that Eris is 27% heavier than Pluto. "This is sort of Pluto's last stand," said Emily Schaller, of California Institute of Technology, part of the research team that publishes its results today in Science.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,,2103810,00.html