Another Planet

NYT reported Add a 10th planet to the solar system - or possibly subtract one. Astronomers announced today that they had found a lump of rock and ice that is larger than Pluto and the farthest known object in the solar system. The discovery will likely rekindle debate over the definition of "planet" and whether Pluto should still be regarded as one. The new object - as yet unnamed, but temporarily designated as 2003 UB313 - is currently 9 billion miles away from the Sun, or 97 times as far away as the Earth and about three times Pluto's current distance from the Sun. But its 560-year elliptical orbit also brings it as close as 3.3 billion miles. Pluto's orbit ranges between 2.7 billion and 4.6 billion miles. The astronomers do not have an exact size for the new planet, but its brightness and distance tell them that it is at least as large as Pluto. "It is guaranteed bigger than Pluto," said Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech and a member of the team that made the discovery. "Even if it were 100 percent reflective, it would be larger than Pluto. It can't be more than 100 percent reflective." The discovery was made Jan. 8 using a 48-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory in California. Dr. Brown and the other members of the team - Chadwick A. Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and David L. Rabinowitz of Yale University - then found that they had, unknowingly, taken images of the planet taken as far back as 2003.

Little Mercury is first, then Venus with its clouds galore, then comes Earth, our mother Planet, and redish Mars is number four. Jupiter is next, a real giant, then Saturn with its shiny rings, Uranus seven, and Neptune eight, and far off Pluto is not great. But Mercury is first.

That was a song a learned when I was very young. Now I guess I am going to have to learn a new song.