[meteorite-list] Xena Awarded 'Dwarf Planet' Status, IAU Rules; Solar System Now Has Eight Planets

From: MexicoDoug <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Aug 25 14:15:10 2006
Message-ID: <001301c6c872$40d27880$29cf5ec8_at_0019110394>

> However, about two decades later, the famed astronomer Gerard Kuiper
> postulated that a region in the outer solar system could house a
> gigantic number of comet-like objects too faint to be seen with the
> telescopes of the day. The Kuiper belt, as it came to be called

Hello List:

...And the well-respected solar system dynamics astronomer in Uruguay Julio
Fernandez is no stranger to being passed over in the credit game astronomers
have been accused to play... He does support a good theory (vs. what was
posted earlier)... in 1980 when that region was just far out, he was the one
who according to some versions "most accurately" theorizes on the Kuiper
Belt's existence, not the lettered American astronomer Kuiper. According to
Jewitt who discovered the "first" KBO in 1992, and who collaborates with
Fernandez, Fernandez deserved consideration.

Kuiper thought a hypothetical belt of dormant comets at that distance would
explain the continuous source of comets. In 1992 when the "first KBO was
discovered", the IAU debated whether to call it the Fernandez Belt, but
Kuiper (1951) had predated him, although another astroguy, Edgewater had
already published essentially the same thing as Kuiper, in the intervening
years between Leonard and Kuiper - but he was largely and unscientifically -
ignored.

Actually, the first published speculation of this Belt was 6 months after
Pluto was discovered. 1930. By UCLA's Frederick Leonard (then at Chicago)
who thought there easily could be plenty of transplutonian objects. Yes,
right, the academician Nininger had the falling out with and with whom he
founded what's today the Meteoritical Society was #1! Or was he?

Now, a bit of rare logic for these vultures - why don't they take the
opportunity to correct this mess and name it the Tombaugh Belt for the true
discoverer of what is now has been downgraded to be its first officially
found "object"? I think Mrs. Tombaugh would have felt her husband didn't get
the short end of the stick "out of sight out of mind" as we officially
start to forget who used stone age tools and perseverance to give grist for
this whole comet and outer belt thing.

ref: http://scienceweek.com/2003/sb030912.htm , by Chad Trijullo discoverer
of the KBO UB313 and now a.k.a. Xena the dwarf.

Best wishes, Doug

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
...Isaac Newton (1675), sarcastically mocking his contemporary competitor,
the dwarf Robert Hooke who originally got Newton interested in Comets and
their orbits - as they unfurled the science of optics to new levels).
http://starryskies.com/~kmiles/spec/hooks.html

"Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of
giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance,
not by virtue of any sharpness on sight on our part, or any physical
distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant
size." ...John of Salisbury (1159), The Metalogican
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0844601594/102-3374628-7600959?n=283155 ..

(still shaken up over Pluto. I bet this is the Solar System's first LBO
(business speak). Of the 3000 astronomers at the meeting, the voting was
done by a mere 300 who stuck around to care. What was it 175 to 125 ?
Probably. 155 to 145, who knows. Democracies .. the apathetic masses
probably have a different opinion but those who have an axe to grind make
the effort and change the world...or Solar System in this case.)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Baalke" <baalke_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>
To: "Meteorite Mailing List" <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2006 11:16 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Xena Awarded 'Dwarf Planet' Status, IAU
Rules;Solar System Now Has Eight Planets


>
> http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12886.html
>
> Xena Awarded "Dwarf Planet" Status, IAU Rules; Solar System Now Has
> Eight Planets
>
> August 24, 2006
>
> PASADENA, Calif.--The International Astronomical Union (IAU) today
> downgraded the status of Pluto to that of a "dwarf planet," a
> designation that will also be applied to the spherical body discovered
> last year by California Institute of Technology planetary scientist Mike
> Brown and his colleagues. The decision means that only the rocky worlds
> of the inner solar system and the gas giants of the outer system will
> hereafter be designated as planets.
>
> The ruling effectively settles a year-long controversy about whether the
> spherical body announced last year and informally named "Xena" would
> rise to planetary status. Somewhat larger than Pluto, the body has been
> informally known as Xena since the formal announcement of its discovery
> on July 29, 2005, by Brown and his co-discoverers, Chad Trujillo of the
> Gemini Observatory and David Rabinowitz of Yale University. Xena will
> now be known as the largest dwarf planet.
>
> "I'm of course disappointed that Xena will not be the tenth planet, but
> I definitely support the IAU in this difficult and courageous decision,"
> said Brown. "It is scientifically the right thing to do, and is a great
> step forward in astronomy.
>
> "Pluto would never be considered a planet if it were discovered today,
> and I think the fact that we've now found one Kuiper-belt object bigger
> than Pluto underscores its shaky status."
>
> Pluto was discovered in 1930. Because of its size and distance from
> Earth, astronomers had no idea of its composition or other
> characteristics at the time. But having no reason to think that many
> other similar bodies would eventually be found in the outer reaches of
> the solar system--or that a new type of body even existed in the
> region--they assumed that designating the new discover as the ninth
> planet was a scientifically accurate decision.
>
> However, about two decades later, the famed astronomer Gerard Kuiper
> postulated that a region in the outer solar system could house a
> gigantic number of comet-like objects too faint to be seen with the
> telescopes of the day. The Kuiper belt, as it came to be called, was
> demonstrated to exist in the 1990s, and astronomers have been finding
> objects of varying size in the region ever since.
>
> Few if any astronomers had previously called for the Kuiper-belt objects
> to be called planets, because most were significantly smaller than
> Pluto. But the announcement of Xena's discovery raised a new need for a
> more precise definition of which objects are planets and which are not.
>
> According to Brown, the decision will pose a difficulty for a public
> that has been accustomed to thinking for the last 75 years that the
> solar system has nine planets.
>
> "It's going to be a difficult thing to accept at first, but we will
> accept it eventually, and that's the right scientific and cultural thing
> to do," Brown says.
>
> In fact, the public has had some experience with the demotion of a
> planet in the past, although not in living memory. Astronomers
> discovered the asteroid Ceres on January 1, 1801--literally at the turn
> of the 19th century. Having no reason to suspect that a new class of
> celestial object had been found, scientists designated it the eighth
> planet (Uranus having been discovered some 20 years earlier).
>
> Soon several other asteroids were discovered, and these, too, were
> summarily designated as newly found planets. But when astronomers
> continued finding numerous other asteroids in the region (there are
> thought to be hundreds of thousands), the astronomical community in the
> early 1850s demoted Ceres and the others and coined the new term
"asteroid."
>
> Xena was discovered on January 8, 2005, at Palomar Observatory with the
> NASA-funded 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope. Xena is about 2,400
> kilometers in diameter. A Kuiper-belt object like Pluto, but slightly
> less reddish-yellow, Xena is currently visible in the constellation
> Cetus to anyone with a top-quality amateur telescope.
>
> Brown and his colleagues in late September announced that Xena has at
> least one moon. This body has been nicknamed Gabrielle, after Xena's
> sidekick on the television series.
>
> Xena is currently about 97 astronomical units from the sun (an
> astronomical unit is the distance between the sun and Earth), which
> means that it is some nine billion miles away at present. Xena is on a
> highly elliptical 560-year orbit, sweeping in as close to the sun as 38
> astronomical units. Currently, however, it is nearly as far away as it
> ever gets.
>
> Pluto's own elliptical orbit takes it as far away as 50 astronomical
> units from the sun during its 250-year revolution. This means that Xena
> is sometimes much closer to Earth than Pluto--although never closer than
> Neptune.
>
> Gabrielle is about 250 kilometers in diameter and reflects only about 1
> percent of the sunlight that its parent reflects. Because of its small
> size, Gabrielle could be oddly shaped.
>
> Brown says that the study of Gabrielle's orbit around Xena hasn't yet
> been fully completed. But once it is, the researchers will be able to
> derive the mass of Xena itself from Gabrielle's orbit. This information
> will lead to new insights on Xena's composition.
>
> Based on spectral data, the researchers think Xena is covered with a
> layer of methane that has seeped from the interior and frozen on the
> surface. As in the case of Pluto, the methane has undergone chemical
> transformations, probably due to the faint solar radiation, that have
> caused the methane layer to redden. But the methane surface on Xena is
> somewhat more yellowish than the reddish-yellow surface of Pluto,
> perhaps because Xena is farther from the sun.
>
> Brown and Trujillo first photographed Xena with the 48-inch Samuel
> Oschin Telescope on October 31, 2003. However, the object was so far
> away that its motion was not detected until they reanalyzed the data in
> January of 2005.
>
> The search for new planets and other bodies in the Kuiper belt is funded
> by NASA. For more information on the program, see the Samuel Oschin
> Telescope's website at http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomarnew/sot.html.
>
> For more information on Mike Brown's research, see
> http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown.
>
> Contact: Robert Tindol (626) 395-3631 tindol_at_caltech.edu
>
>
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Received on Fri 25 Aug 2006 02:14:03 PM PDT