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2019.04.27
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A museum in America has sparked off another round in an astronomical debate by installing a display of the solar system that excludes the planet Pluto. The controversial decision by New York's Rose Center for Earth and Space to include only eight planets has raised the ire of many astronomers and stargazers in the large-scale solar-system model at the Rose Center's Hayden Planetarium, only the eight planets from Mercury to Neptune are shown orbiting the sun, It seems as if Pluto, at least in the Rose Center, has been demoted after 70 years as a full-fledged planet.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 through painstaking observations made by Clyde Tombaugh, an astronomer working at Arizona's Lowell Observatory. Tombaugh believed that apparent variations in the orbit of Uranus implied that an as-yet-undiscovered planet must exist in the farthest reaches of the solar system. The irony is that these supposed variations in Uranus's orbit, recorded for decades,were in fact,erroneous as was revealed when modern spacecraft made more accurate measurements possible.
As further observations were made, it became clear that the ninth planet was unique. Pluto, with a diameter of 2,340 kilometers, is far smaller than its planetary neighbors. Moreover, in 1992 astronomers discovered an icy asteroid over 100 kilometers in diameter in an area known as the Kuiper Belt, a large belt of asteroids beyond Neptune. Scientists now estimate that there are over 35,000 objects larger than 100 kilometers in the Kuiper Belt, and some of them could be nearly as large as Pluto. This tends to support the contention that perhaps Pluto should be considered the largest asteroid rather than the smallest planet.
In spite of these developments, the international Astronomical Union voted in 1999 to maintain Pluto's traditional planetary status. This has appeased the thousands of professional and amateur astronomers who were outraged by the Rose Center's decision. Either way, Neil Tyson, the director of Hayden Planetarium is not concerned. Said Tyson: “There is no scientific insight to be gained by counting planets. Eight or nine, the numbers don't matter.”
A museum in America has sparked off another round in an astronomical debate by installing a display of the solar system that excludes the planet Pluto. The controversial decision by New York's Rose Center for Earth and Space to include only eight planets has raised the ire of many astronomers and stargazers in the large-scale solar-system model at the Rose Center's Hayden Planetarium, only the eight planets from Mercury to Neptune are shown orbiting the sun, It seems as if Pluto, at least in the Rose Center, has been demoted after 70 years as a full-fledged planet.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 through painstaking observations made by Clyde Tombaugh, an astronomer working at Arizona's Lowell Observatory. Tombaugh believed that apparent variations in the orbit of Uranus implied that an as-yet-undiscovered planet must exist in the farthest reaches of the solar system. The irony is that these supposed variations in Uranus's orbit, recorded for decades,were in fact,erroneous as was revealed when modern spacecraft made more accurate measurements possible.
As further observations were made, it became clear that the ninth planet was unique. Pluto, with a diameter of 2,340 kilometers, is far smaller than its planetary neighbors. Moreover, in 1992 astronomers discovered an icy asteroid over 100 kilometers in diameter in an area known as the Kuiper Belt, a large belt of asteroids beyond Neptune. Scientists now estimate that there are over 35,000 objects larger than 100 kilometers in the Kuiper Belt, and some of them could be nearly as large as Pluto. This tends to support the contention that perhaps Pluto should be considered the largest asteroid rather than the smallest planet.
In spite of these developments, the international Astronomical Union voted in 1999 to maintain Pluto's traditional planetary status. This has appeased the thousands of professional and amateur astronomers who were outraged by the Rose Center's decision. Either way, Neil Tyson, the director of Hayden Planetarium is not concerned. Said Tyson: “There is no scientific insight to be gained by counting planets. Eight or nine, the numbers don't matter.”
