What happened to Pluto

"People love Pluto!" says Morehead Planetarium Educator, Amy Sayle.

Referring to the 8 planets in our solar system during planetarium shows still brings up lots of questions about Pluto. Some visitors have gotten quite worked up about demotion. It's not just adults that grew up with Pluto the planet, kids have lots of opinions about the subject as well. Even mentioning the the IAU brings some "good natured boos" from audiences young and old according to Sayle.

So why did astronomers feel the need change something as seemingly basic as membership in our solar system? The answer lies in the definition of, or lack there of, the word "planet".

It all started in 2005 when CalTech professor of planetary astronomy discovered Eris, icy dot in his telescope beyond Pluto with an even more eccentric orbit. Initially Brown was championed as the discoverer of the tenth planet, something that had not been done seen since Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930, but this got astronomers thinking. Is Eris really a planet? Beyond Pluto (and now Eris) there's a lot out there, over 1000 objects are known today. Are they all planets? What is a planet?

The following year, The International Astronomical Union (IAU) the professional organization of astronomers responsible for naming celestial bodies, provided a more formal definition during its annual meeting. To be considered a planet a body has to meet 3 criteria, 2 of which gauge its size: it must be in orbit around the sun, must have assumed a spherical shape, and "cleared the neighborhood". It's that last one that cost Pluto it's planetary status. It lacks enough mass to clean up it's path around the sun.

The IAU offered an olive branch of sorts to Pluto fans with the creation of the designation "Plutoid" for anything that met those first 2 criteria. Pluto fans weren't appeased, even prompting student protests.

Astronomers didn't anticipate the backlash this created, or the confusion among some kids who thought this meant that Pluto had somehow gone away or even ceased to exist. Not only did countless textbooks instantly become outdated, the mnemonic that we learned in elementary school to remember the order of the planets had to change as well. Our very eager/earnest/educated mother started serving nachos instead of nine pizzas. 3rd grade boys studying the topic seem to prefer: "My Vicious Earthworm Might Just Swallow Us Now."

2 years ago helps keep that going that as audiences travel out to Pluto and it's "friends" in the Kuiper belt, as Sayle calls them.

For all this attention being paid this little icy ball just 0.21% the mass of Earth, we know relatively little about Pluto. That will change when NASA's New Horizons reaches there in July 2015. Launched 8 months before that faithful IAU meeting, the spacecraft is traveling at nearly 36,000 miles per hour towards its target. To put that into perspective, if you could get the family minivan up to that speed it would cut that summer vacation trip from Raleigh to Orlando to just under 59 seconds. That is assuming the family minivan can handle mach 50.

Its still kept company by Charon (the two are called a double planet by many) along with moons Nix and Hydra as well as S/2011P1. That last moon with the boring name was discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope last year theorized be the result of a collision between Pluto and one of it's "friends" in the Kuiper belt.

Even under optimal conditions with a massive telescope, Pluto will appear as an easily overlooked dull gray dot. If you are up just before dawn look to the east above the handle of the the teapot in Sagittarius to Pluto's location.