Recently a Kuiper Belt Object named 2005 UB313 has been discovered. It is about 3 times the distance of Pluto from the Sun, but gets closer in about 200 years. It has an orbital period of 556 years or so, and its diameter is about 1800 miles. This makes it bigger than Pluto, so all over the place in the media, headlines about finding a tenth planet have sprouted. But is it, and Pluto for that matter, really a planet?
People had been so expecting and getting excited about a ninth planet at the beginning of the 20th century so that when a large Kuiper Belt object was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, it was instantaneously proclaimed a Planet! They thought it was as big as Uranus, and they called it Pluto. Further observations, including occultations that did not take place, showed it to be much smaller, maybe as big as the Earth, no maybe as big as Mars, no maybe big as Mercury; they really did not know for sure. Then Harrington discovered in 1980 that it had a satellite Charon. Now when two bodies are found in orbit around each other, the mass of both can be computed fairly accurately. Astronomers did that, and found that Pluto was only 1500 miles across. The United States is bigger than that. So that put into serious question whether Pluto should be considered a planet. It has a mass of only 13 yottagrams, compared to 5960 yottagrams (or 5.96 xonagrams) for the Earth, 330 yottagrams for Mercury, 148 yottagrams for Ganymede, 89 yottagrams for Io, and 74 yottagrams for our own Moon. Is the Moon a planet? It is on the borderline. And Pluto is much smaller than that.
It instead was the biggest Kuiper Belt object, a group of large objects outside the orbit of Neptune. Many large Kuiper Belt objects have been discovered, including Varuna, 600 miles across, Charon, 600 miles, Quaoar, 900 miles, Sedna, 1100 miles, closing in on the radius of Pluto. But still Pluto was the largest of the Kuiper Belt objects, so some still considered it a planet.
But now they've done it. Pluto is no longer even the biggest Kuiper Belt object. There is one bigger, namely 2005 UB313
The newly discovered object is about 1.5 times wider than Pluto and therefore 4.5 times more massive, probably. And it STILL is not a planet. Not when its mass is only about 58 yottagrams. If we called the new object a planet, then surely we must call the Moon one. So definitely now, Pluto is NOT a planet.
But the media and the IAU are going to call it a planet, since they call Pluto a planet. The problem with this is that eventually there are going to be too many planets - more in the Kuiper Belt than elsewhere. Eventually they will give up on this, just like they did with calling Ceres, Pallas, and so forth planets near the beginning of the 19th century. They will take planet status away from both 2005 UB313 and Pluto. Now the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt has one member, namely Ceres, that is much bigger than the rest, and the rest go down rather uniformly from there, from Vesta and Pallas on down. I think that Pluto, 2005 UB313, Quaoar, Orcus, and so forth are the Vestas and Pallases of the Kuiper Belt, and The Big One has still yet to be discovered. By analogy with the Mars-Jupiter asteroids, I would estimate that The Big One, when found, will have a mass approaching 1 xonagram (1,000 yottagrams), and be between the Moon and Mars in size. That definitely would be a planet. But I predict only one of these big kahunahs.
In other words, eventually I think the Solar System will be shown to have 9 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and not Pluto, but Planet X, a Kuiper Belt object approaching Mars in size. I could be wrong. There might be a bunch of equal-sized objects in the Kuiper Belt, with no planets. But the example of Ceres seems to show to me that there is a Big One yet to be discovered.
Another matter is the naming of 2005 UB313. Mike Brown, the discoverer, first said he was gong to call it Lila, after a daughter, then he said he was going to call it Xena, after the female warrior, and it got spread all over the Internet, but not the main news media. But I don't think that will likely be its name. It just doesn't fit. Hercules, Jupiter, Ceres and so forth are deities or superpeople that are thousands of years old. Xena is only 10 years old, the modern creation of Hollywood to provide an ancient female superhero for girls to aspire to. More appropriate would be to name it after a god of some religion, and underworld gods seem to predominate out here in the dank recesses of the outer Solar System.
So I would like to propose this name: Baiame. Baiame is the God of the Australian Aborigines, specifically the God of Death, and a well-known legend involving the Southern Cross features Baiame. I urge the IAU to select this name for the object, and I am hoping that Australian aborigines will support me on this name for this far distant asteroid. As far as being a planet, in my opinion, it is too small, and so is Pluto. Until something bigger is found, the Solar System will be known to have eight planets.
2005/08/02
Monday, February 20, 2006
Deep Impact is Coming!
Comets are all the time threatening the Earth with devastating collisions. In 1996, Comet Hyakutake came so close that its tail spread nearly across the sky; it missed by about 9 million miles. Shoemaker-Levy 9 didn't just threaten to crash into a planet, it actually did so. Pow! Pow! Pow! the fragments of this comet hit Jupiter, giving the planet a case of the measles for a few days.
So now we are getting revenge against the comets. NASA decided that it would go to the comet and crash into it first. The comet is Comet Tempel 1, a moderately faint periodic comet. The NASA probe will release a projectile that will crash into the comet, causing a big crater there, and throwing all sorts of comet stuff into space, where the rest of the probe can relay information of it back to Earth. By that method, we may find out what is in the comet and how it got there.
Will we see it in our skies? We certainly will. But not here on the East Coast, as the comet will be below the horizon at that time. But people in the West, like in California, will be able to see it. It should brighten by several magnitudes when the smash occurs. Here in Virginia, we will have a skywatch on Sunday evening, and then there will be a live coverage of the smash in the Science Museum about 2 in the morning. It should brighten from a faint object in a moderately large telescope to a object bright enough to be seen without a telescope. If you are on the West Coast, definitely look for this comet and watch it brighten before your eyes.
2005/06/28
So now we are getting revenge against the comets. NASA decided that it would go to the comet and crash into it first. The comet is Comet Tempel 1, a moderately faint periodic comet. The NASA probe will release a projectile that will crash into the comet, causing a big crater there, and throwing all sorts of comet stuff into space, where the rest of the probe can relay information of it back to Earth. By that method, we may find out what is in the comet and how it got there.
Will we see it in our skies? We certainly will. But not here on the East Coast, as the comet will be below the horizon at that time. But people in the West, like in California, will be able to see it. It should brighten by several magnitudes when the smash occurs. Here in Virginia, we will have a skywatch on Sunday evening, and then there will be a live coverage of the smash in the Science Museum about 2 in the morning. It should brighten from a faint object in a moderately large telescope to a object bright enough to be seen without a telescope. If you are on the West Coast, definitely look for this comet and watch it brighten before your eyes.
2005/06/28
Big Red Moon and Other Planets
Tonight I saw the Summer Solstice Full Moon. This full moon is the lowest moon there can possibly be in the sky. This is because the full moon is opposite the sun, and the sun is at the summer solstice for the Northern hemisphere, so the moon is at the winter solstice. It must be a really bright sight in places like Sydney and Buenos Aires, really high in the sky and big and bright. I saw it tonight as a huge red disk, enlarged by its nearness to the horizon and the Moon Illusion. The red disk reminds me of the words from the Double song "Rangoon Moon", "so low and so red". I thought of calling it a McMoon (see below for why).
The previous day I got a good look at it with my 12x60 binoculars. It is really something to watch this moon, and note where the volcanic plains and cratered regions are, and that some titanic events had to have happened to our companion world billions of years ago, such as the one that produced Copernicus crater. It is just barely clearing the trees at my house, and so I have to binoculate it when it is in a hole or clearing in the trees.
Last Friday was one of the better Skywatches I have attended at the Science Museum of Virginia. About 10 astronomers with telescopes, including Gary Cowardin's Telescope Cinema featuring The Moon, came out to show the stars to about 50 people. The hour was late - it did not really get dark until about 9:30 pm. However, we saw all of the planets in the solar system, including Earth (below us), except the outer ones and except Mars, and in addition the Sun and Moon.
The highlight for me was seeing Mercury and showing Mercury to the public in my 8-inch Celestron. It was rather orangish yellow because of its low altitude, and it showed red and green sides due probably to chromatic aberration. It was probably a full disk, and no detail was visible, but the public was still interested in it anyway. After a while Mercury became weak as it hovered only 2 degrees above McDonald's - McMercury. I then switched to Venus after finding Saturn still in the trees. It was much brighter- easily visible, but again it did not show much in the telescope. as its phase was gibbous or full. Eventually Venus faded over McDonalds, and so I left McVenus and went to Jupiter, which showed three large satellites on one side and one on the other. I also showed the Moon and tried to get M4, but I could not distinguish it from the Moon-Richmond Axis of Light Pollution. I then went back to Saturn; it was dull red and the seeing was terrible, but it still showed the rings and wowed the public. Eventually McSaturn faded also. Since I had a meeting the next morning, I packed up my McCelestron at 10:30 pm and went home, but it was a good night with mostly clear skies and ideal temperatures.
2005/6/21
The previous day I got a good look at it with my 12x60 binoculars. It is really something to watch this moon, and note where the volcanic plains and cratered regions are, and that some titanic events had to have happened to our companion world billions of years ago, such as the one that produced Copernicus crater. It is just barely clearing the trees at my house, and so I have to binoculate it when it is in a hole or clearing in the trees.
Last Friday was one of the better Skywatches I have attended at the Science Museum of Virginia. About 10 astronomers with telescopes, including Gary Cowardin's Telescope Cinema featuring The Moon, came out to show the stars to about 50 people. The hour was late - it did not really get dark until about 9:30 pm. However, we saw all of the planets in the solar system, including Earth (below us), except the outer ones and except Mars, and in addition the Sun and Moon.
The highlight for me was seeing Mercury and showing Mercury to the public in my 8-inch Celestron. It was rather orangish yellow because of its low altitude, and it showed red and green sides due probably to chromatic aberration. It was probably a full disk, and no detail was visible, but the public was still interested in it anyway. After a while Mercury became weak as it hovered only 2 degrees above McDonald's - McMercury. I then switched to Venus after finding Saturn still in the trees. It was much brighter- easily visible, but again it did not show much in the telescope. as its phase was gibbous or full. Eventually Venus faded over McDonalds, and so I left McVenus and went to Jupiter, which showed three large satellites on one side and one on the other. I also showed the Moon and tried to get M4, but I could not distinguish it from the Moon-Richmond Axis of Light Pollution. I then went back to Saturn; it was dull red and the seeing was terrible, but it still showed the rings and wowed the public. Eventually McSaturn faded also. Since I had a meeting the next morning, I packed up my McCelestron at 10:30 pm and went home, but it was a good night with mostly clear skies and ideal temperatures.
2005/6/21
High School Students for Dark Skies
This is my latest blog, one for astronomy, which is one of my interests, and nature and environmental subjects as well, including nature hikes and birding.
Yesterday was a good day at the Richmond Astronomical Society. We saw the President of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Mr. Lockman, give a speech on radio telescopes at Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia.
The highlight of the meeting was hearing Mary Kathryne Dickinson, a high school student, make a presentationon her project to measure light pollution in the Richmond, Virginia area. The project has some interesting features, such as a formula to measure sky brightness, some graphs, and a map of the United States and Canada showing where the light-polluted areas are. This talk reminds me of another one given by a high school student in 2003, by Jennifer Barlow, on her effort to get Americans to turn off their lights for two hours.
One of these two women is studying the problem of light pollution, and the other is trying to do something about it. Combined together, sure something will be done about our vanishing skies. But we all need to help; it is not going to go away on the efforts of two high school girls alone.
2005/06/14
Yesterday was a good day at the Richmond Astronomical Society. We saw the President of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Mr. Lockman, give a speech on radio telescopes at Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia.
The highlight of the meeting was hearing Mary Kathryne Dickinson, a high school student, make a presentationon her project to measure light pollution in the Richmond, Virginia area. The project has some interesting features, such as a formula to measure sky brightness, some graphs, and a map of the United States and Canada showing where the light-polluted areas are. This talk reminds me of another one given by a high school student in 2003, by Jennifer Barlow, on her effort to get Americans to turn off their lights for two hours.
One of these two women is studying the problem of light pollution, and the other is trying to do something about it. Combined together, sure something will be done about our vanishing skies. But we all need to help; it is not going to go away on the efforts of two high school girls alone.
2005/06/14
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