Is Pluto A Planet?

Planet Pluto
Image credit: NASA/APL/SwRI

Pluto was discovered through a careful, systematic search, unlike Neptune, whose position was calculated from gravitational theory. Nevertheless, the history of the look for Pluto began with indications that Uranus had slight departures from its predicted orbit, departures that might be due to the gravitation of an undiscovered “Planet X.” Early within the twentieth century, several astronomers, most notably Percival-Lowell , then at peak of his fame as an advocate of intelligent life on Mars, took an interest in checking out this ninth planet.

Lowell and his contemporaries based their calculations totally on tiny unexplained irregularities within the motion of Uranus. Lowell’s computations indicated two possible locations for a perturbing Planet X; the more likely of the 2 was within the constellation Gemini. He predicted a mass for the earth intermediate between the masses of Earth and Neptune (his calculations gave about 6 Earth masses). Other astronomers, however, obtained other solutions from the small orbital irregularities, even including one model that indicated 2 planets beyond Neptune.

At his Arizona observatory, Lowell searched without success for the unknown planet from 1906 until his death in 1916, and therefore the search wasn’t renewed until 1929. In February 1930, a young observing assistant named Clyde Tombaugh, comparing photographs he made on January 23 and 29 of that year, found a faint object whose motion seemed to be about right for a planet far beyond the orbit of Neptune. The new planet was named for Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld, who dwelt in remote darkness, a bit like the new planet. the selection of this name, among hundreds suggested, was helped by the very fact that the primary two letters were Percival Lowell’s initials.

Although discovery of Pluto appeared initially to be a vindication of theory of gravitation almost like the sooner triumph of Adams and Le Verrier in predicting the position of Neptune, we now know that Lowell’s calculations were wrong. When its mass and size were finally measured, it had been found that Pluto couldn’t possibly have exerted any measurable pull on either Uranus or Neptune. Astronomers are now convinced that reported small anomalies within the motions of Uranus aren’t , and never were, real.

From the time of its discovery, it had been clear that Pluto wasn’t an enormous just like the other four outer system planets. For long- time, it had been thought that the mass of Pluto was almost like that of Earth, in order that it had been classed as a fifth planet , somehow misplaced within the far outer-reaches of solar-system . There have been other anomalies, however, as Pluto’s orbit was more eccentric & inclined to the plane of our solar-system than that of the other planet. Only after discovery of its moon Charon in 1978 could the mass of Pluto be measured, & it turn-out to be far but less the mass of Earth.

In addition to Charon, Pluto has 4 small moons. Subsequent observations of Charon showed that this moon is in retrograde orbit & features a diameter of about 1200 kilometers, quite half the dimensions of Pluto itself. This makes Charon the moon whose size is that the largest fraction of its parent planet. We could even consider Pluto & Charon as a double world. Seen from Pluto, Charon would be as large as 8 full moons on Earth.

To many astronomers, Pluto appeared like the odd cousin that everybody hopes won’t show up at subsequent family reunion. Neither its path round the Sun nor its size resembles either the enormous planets or the terrestrial planets. In the 1990s, astronomers began to get additional small objects within the far outer system , showing that Pluto wasn’t unique. One among them (called Eris) is almost an equivalent size as Pluto, and another ( Makemake) is substantially smaller. It became clear to astronomers that Pluto was so different from the opposite planets that it needed a replacement classification. Therefore, it had been called a dwarf planet, meaning a planet much smaller than the terrestrial planets. We now know of the many small objects within the vicinity of Pluto and that we have classified several as dwarf planets.

A similar history was related to discovery of asteroids. When 1st asteroid ( Ceres) was discovered at the start of the 19th century, it had been hailed as new-planet. within the following years, however, other objects were found with similar orbits to Ceres. Astronomers decided that these shouldn’t all be considered planets, in order that they invented new class of objects, called minor planets or asteroids. Today, Ceres is also called a dwarf planet. Both minor planets & dwarf planets are a part of an entire belt or zones of same objects.

So, is Pluto a planet? Our answer is yes, but it’s a dwarf planet, clearly not within the same league with the 8 major planets (four giants & 4 terrestrials). While some people were upset when Pluto was reclassified, we might means that a dwarf tree remains a kind of tree & a dwarf galaxy remains a kind of galaxy.