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Pluto died much as it lived -- famous, but an oddball
Frozen mass stripped of title as ninth planet
Friday, August 25, 2006
By KAY POWELL
COX NEWS SERVICE
ATLANTA -- Pluto, the least of the major celestial bodies, never asked to be a planet. Once elevated, it became an influential figure in astronomy and astrology, in classical music and in cartoons.
In 1930, a private astronomer discovered the frozen mass and designated it Planet X. It soon orbited into the stratosphere's most exclusive club as the ninth planet. An English schoolgirl, Venetia Burney, 11, named the newest planet Pluto after the mythological lord of the underworld.
Pluto the planet, 76, died Thursday in Prague, Czech Republic, when it was killed by the International Astronomical Union -- separated from the eight "classical planets" and lumped in with two similarly sized "dwarf planets."
No memorial service is planned, because it has been several years since astronomers considered Pluto a real planet.
"The previous definition was ridiculous," said Mike Crenshaw, a Georgia State University astronomy professor. Crenshaw is now revising his PowerPoint presentations and quiz questions. (The answer to his question to name the smallest of the planets is now Mercury.) Teachers around the world also are scrambling to alter lesson plans.
Although 2,500 astronomers from 75 nations attended the conference, only about 300 showed up to vote. The IAU's definition now specifies that a planet not only must orbit the sun and be large enough to assume a nearly round shape, but must "clear the neighborhood around its orbit."
It is not Pluto's size -- 1,430 miles in diameter -- that disqualifies it. Pluto is out because its orbit -- 248 years to complete one journey around the sun -- carried it inside the orbit of Neptune from 1979 to 1999.
In other words, Pluto did not clear the neighborhood around its orbit.
Under the new rules, two of the three objects that came tantalizingly close to planethood joined Pluto as dwarfs: the asteroid Ceres, which was a planet in the 1800s before it got demoted, and 2003 UB313, an icy object slightly larger than Pluto and nicknamed "Xena." The third object, Pluto's largest moon, Charon, isn't in line for any special designation.
Pluto was predeceased by the man who first turned a telescope on it. Clyde Tombaugh died in 1997 at 90. A canister of his ashes is aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which is expected to orbit Pluto on July 14, 2015, according to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
"It's disappointing in a way, and confusing," said Patricia Tombaugh, his 93-year-old widow.
"But I understand science is not something that just sits there," she said from Las Cruces, N.M.. "It goes on. Clyde finally said before he died, 'It's there. Whatever it is. It is there.' "
Pluto influenced the arts high and low. Within a year of its discovery in 1930, Walt Disney gave the same name to Mickey Mouse's faithful companion -- Pluto the dog. Whatever happens to the former planet, the Walt Disney Studio said Thursday, Pluto remains Disney's dog star.
British composer Gustav Holst created the popular symphonic suite "The Planets" in 1916 and steadfastly refused to revise the suite after Pluto's discovery. Thursday, his decision was bestowed added credence by the IAU.
"The Planets" is one of the most popular pieces in symphony orchestra repertoire and has been fodder for legions of film scores.
In the world of astrology, Pluto's designation as a dwarf planet changes little regarding its influence on charting, said licensed astrologer David Railey, a former president of the Metro Atlanta Astrological Society.
"Pluto in astrology," he said, "is associated with transformation or rebirth, a rite of passage in a person's life, a metamorphosis."
Not unlike what Pluto itself is undergoing.
Survivors include eight planets, Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus.
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