No Demotion for Pluto
W A S H I N G T O N, Feb. 3, 2000 -- Finally, after weeks of controversy, it’s official. There will be no “demotion” for Pluto.
Pluto has always been something of a misfit among the other major planets, but a move by the International Astronomical Union last month that some felt would have reclassified it as a minor planet drew howls of protest.
And Wednesday, the IAU said categorically that its experts had “decided against assigning any minor planet number to Pluto.”
Group with Smaller Objects IAU General Secretary Johannes Andersen said his group never wanted to “demote” Pluto, but had wanted to give it a technical number that would group it with other smaller objects at the edge of the solar system, like some comets and asteroids, to help astronomers study it.
Nearly 10,000 such small heavenly bodies have been counted so far, and there was a sentimental move afoot to give Pluto the round number 10,000 as a tribute to its recently deceased discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh.
Within that group, Pluto could have been classified among dozens of so-called Trans-Neptunian Objects whose orbits cross Neptune’s, as Pluto’s will Feb. 11.
Little Justification But the plans found little favor with planetary scientists in the American Astronomical Society, the premier group of space scientists in the United States.
“This action would undoubtedly be viewed by the broader scientific community and the general public as a ‘reclassification’ of Pluto from a major planet to a minor planet,” the AAS scientists said in an e-mail statement. “We feel that there is little scientific or historical justification for such an action.”
Even astrologers weighed in.
“Too small to be a planet? Nonsense,” Vanity Fair’s astrologer Michael Lutin told Time magazine last week. “Pluto has the power to bring about life-changing transformations. It can turn jerks into geniuses, so there’s still hope for the scientists.”
Emotional Attachment As the controversy raged, mostly in a furious barrage of e-mail that wound up in IAU chief Andersen’s inbox, the IAU’s expert on the issue, Michael A’Hearn, took it in stride.
“There are a lot of people with an emotional attachment to Pluto,” A’Hearn told Reuters two weeks ago in a telephone interview from the University of Maryland. He was not available for comment Wednesday.
Pluto has never quite fit in with the other major planets. It is small and craggy where the other planets in the outer solar system are big and gassy; it is less than half the size of any other planet; its orbit tilts up from the solar system plane and is the only one to cross another planet’s; and its satellite, Charon, is larger in proportion to it than any other planet’s moon.
But it has always been a star with earthlings. When it was discovered in 1930 it was one of the biggest stories of that year, and Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse’s dog in its honor.