astroengine writes
The debate as to whether Pluto is a planet or a dwarf planet rumbles on, but in a new animation of the small world, one can't help but imagine another definition for Pluto. As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft continues its epic journey into the outer solar system, its Kuiper Belt target is becoming brighter and more defined. Seen through the mission's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera, this new set of observations clearly shows Pluto and its biggest moon Charon locked in a tight orbital dance separated by only 11,200 miles. (Compared with the Earth-moon orbital separation of around 240,000 miles, you can see how compact the Pluto-Charon system really is.) Both bodies are shown to be orbiting a common point — the "barycenter" is located well above Pluto's surface prompting a new debate on whether or not Pluto and Charon should be redefined as a "binary planet".
Binary yes, planet no.
By Henriok
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2014-Aug-8 18:27
• Score: 5, Insightful
• Thread
The arguments for demoting Pluto from its planetary status still holds. And hardly anyone objects to Pluto and Charon together as a binary system. But this "new" insight does not promote Pluto/Charon to planetary status. Binary dwarf planet, binary kuiper belt object, binary plutoid. Absolutely. Binary planet? No.
What debate?
By glwtta
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2014-Aug-8 18:35
• Score: 5, Informative
• Thread
Planet and Dwarf Planet are arbitrary labels defined by the IAU.
How can you "debate" about that?
This is pretty damn silly
By glwtta
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2014-Aug-8 18:42
• Score: 3
• Thread
This mission will put a new spotlight on Pluto and its âoedwarf planetâ status, potentially highlighting its current classification as a woefully inadequate description of such a dynamic and interesting binary system.
Ok, so it's a "binary dwarf planet" - can we tone down the prose now?
Re:So the Sun/Jupiter system as well?
By jklovanc
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2014-Aug-8 19:47
• Score: 4, Insightful
• Thread
No, because Jupiter is not a star. It is the same reason that Pluto/Charon is not a binary planet as neither of them is a planet.
Re:Binary yes, planet no.
By jonfr
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2014-Aug-8 20:08
• Score: 4, Insightful
• Thread
Anything that is a sphere and orbits a star is a planet. Asteroids don't have sphere shape. Same goes for comets. The reason for the name "dwarf planets" is that of naming issue. There are more than 100 planet object out there, most of them smaller than planet Mercury.
Haumea is a planet, but is minor elongated due it's rapid orbital period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
List of other dwarf planets.
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/pl...
Then there is a chance of Earth size planets (both above and below in size and mass) in the outer region of our solar system that have not yet been discovered. At least there are clues about them today, even if they have so far not yet been found. It is my guess they are going to be found, given time and advances in technology that allows for better detection of outer orbital planets in our solar system.
http://www.space.com/7728-eart...
http://www.theguardian.com/sci...
There is a lot out there that we don't have no clue about and there are discoveries to be made (if the funding holds).