Goodbye Pluto
August 24, 2006 – 9:39 pm
Apparently the defenition I previously gave was still beta. It is now “Officially” as follows:
“A celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a … nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.”
Because Pluto’s orbit overlaps with Neptune’s it is no longer a planet. Instead a new catagory has been created. These smaller planets are called “dwarf planets” with is essentially smaller “Planets” in the “old” sense of the word.
The astronomers have also created a 3rd category of objects called simply “small solar system bodies.” These will be astroids, comets, and such.