See, this is why the government has to crack down on illegal immigrants. Now we have new "planets" coming in and taking all the other planets jobs. Which means planets like Jupiter have to pay more in taxes, while these illegal planets are just livign off our welfare and getting free in-state tuition at schools....
I think the new planets are exciting, but I was worried about what their names were going to be. I didn't want to have planets Wachovia and Clear Channel or something. ;p
I would be worried about the naming (wouldn't that be terrifying!) if astronomers didn't cling so tightly to tradition. As it is, Planets are named for Roman gods (although Uranus is from the Greek
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That's great to hear. I'm glad I got you so excited...um...about planets...and stuff. :P
I've always found this kind of thing fascinating. I remember being in middle school and waiting on pins and needles for each new release of photos of planets & moons from the Voyager spacecrafts. I still love to check out the latest photos from spacecrafts & landing rovers. I'm such an excitable geek about space stuff.
I guess now that I think about it, I can't remember any planetary mnemonic devices that actually rhyme.
The new definition of a planet is that it meats the following requirements:
(1)has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium [read: nearly round]
(2)is in orbit around a star, but is neither (a)a star nor (b)a satellite of a planet
(3)has a diameter of at least 800km (~500 miles) and
(4)has a mass of at least 1/12,000th of the Earth (about 5 * 10^24 kg)
They are calling Ceres, Pluto, Charon, and Xena "dwarf palnets" to differentiate them from the 8 "classical planets." Pluto, Charon, and Xena are also being called "Plutons" because of their distance from the sun and material makeup.
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(as an aside, I went to look up bourgeois in the dictionary, and was surprised to find that I actually spelled it correctly. Yay me!)
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I've always found this kind of thing fascinating. I remember being in middle school and waiting on pins and needles for each new release of photos of planets & moons from the Voyager spacecrafts. I still love to check out the latest photos from spacecrafts & landing rovers. I'm such an excitable geek about space stuff.
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My very excellent marmoset caught Julie sitting under Ned's purple cow...xenophobe?
Okay, that's not a rhyme, but do we currently have any rhymes for the names of the planets?
What's the official standard for being a planet, anyway?
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The new definition of a planet is that it meats the following requirements:
(1)has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium [read: nearly round]
(2)is in orbit around a star, but is neither (a)a star nor (b)a satellite of a planet
(3)has a diameter of at least 800km (~500 miles) and
(4)has a mass of at least 1/12,000th of the Earth (about 5 * 10^24 kg)
They are calling Ceres, Pluto, Charon, and Xena "dwarf palnets" to differentiate them from the 8 "classical planets." Pluto, Charon, and Xena are also being called "Plutons" because of their distance from the sun and material makeup.
Reply
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