Do you think it's possible that Pluto is NOT a dwarf planet?

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I never thought we'd get this sort of view of Pluto in my lifetime!

I wonder if astronomers will reconsider Pluto's status as a "dwarf planet." Especially if they measure it, and find that the diameter is 4,000 miles or thereabouts.

Do you think this could possibly happen?

It would be exciting - I know they said it's bigger than they thought, but how much I don't know. This is all very interesting. I didn't think there was so much to be discovered about our own solar system.

I was VERY sad when they "demoted" Pluto. I grew up with Pluto as a full-fledged, oddball planet with the funny, eccentric orbit. There was an air of mystery about it.

I get the feeling this "mystery" will lessen considerably over the coming days.

I truly hope they place Pluto, once again, on the Pantheon of Full-Fledged Planets.

Yeah, I remember it very well. I was only 9 I had previously learned about planets and learned the order as "My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets" (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) and was probably more upset that didn't work anymore.

Pluto's diameter is only 2370 km though.

They've changed the diameter measurements so many times in my lifetime!

In the 1970s, the range was from about 1,000 miles to 4,000 miles.

We shall see what the final determination is.

I took my username as I became aware of Asperger's around the time that Pluto was reclassified.I felt empathy with it. My avatar is a bit of fun,it used to be a picture of the planet.

Possibly.
Though Pluto is confirmed to be a gradually eroding hunk of ice due to both solar weather and other spacial stuff.
It is expected that one day Pluto will erode completely away.

The difference they suddenly came up with between planetesimals and planets, seemed pretty arbitrary to me.

Bask in the splendor:




http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Where-i ... /index.php
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Archives.php
http://eyes.nasa.gov/
http://eyes.nasa.gov/eyes-on-pluto.html

I highly recommend the app on the last link.

It looks like a planet (or planetini) to me.

HIGHLY unlikely that the astronomy community will reinstate a radically bigger size for Pluto.

They might change its diameter by a few dozen miles, but they wont declare that the 1470 mile wide sphere is as big as Mars (4000 miles). They've been zeroing in on the object for a long time, and pretty much know its size.

Also there is another issue: Eris.

In the Nineties they discovered Eris orbiting way beyond Pluto which is a hair smaller than Pluto but is 27 percent more massive than Pluto- making Pluto the tenth most massive (but still the nineth biggest) object known to be orbiting the Sun. So if you reinstate Pluto as a "planet" you might have to also promote Eris to planet status. And then Pluto would no longer have the distinction of being the "last" planet at the edge of the Solar System because Eris is three times the distance from the Sun as Pluto.

All I can say is it's about time Lil Ole Pluto got his due. He mostly just gets ignored but that's in the past! The term for small planets is planetoid and Pluto got demoted to that but maybe seeing him will enable an upgrade to planet?

The nitrogen atmosphere is tenuous, at best. Ices of water and ammonia cover the surface.

Not much to see here, folks! Move along!

Seriously, it's good to finally settle some assumptions and speculation regarding Pluto.

Ceres had the exact same thing happen in the 1800's but to simply "asteroid" status. The Pluto classification incident promoted it to alongside Pluto's rank.

I suspect that it may be a jelly-filled pastry.

It was just discovered that Pluto is not actually a planet. The Sun and the Moon were once classified as planets until it became discovered that they weren't.

It's just semantics.