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and do you call the win2k box uranus?

It is now named Urectum.

How do they name these things? 2001 KX76 - how boring! Charon is named - why not this? Don't these astronomers have any creativity left in them? Maybe they're waiting to name it - a 'Name That Planet' contest or something. Or if someone pays enough, they'll name it after them - money got a tourist into space.

The International Astronomical Union gets to set names, and their FAQ addresses the possibility of buying them (and the question of whether Pluto is a planet or not). There is a description here of how the IAU goes about naming various things.

Well, International Astronomical Union so far has not defined pluto as non-planet but is edging towards it with the detection of many other objects of similar scope and size as Pluto and Charon (Pluto's moon).

http://www.iau.org/PlutoPR.html

Pluto's been a planet for a long time, why change it? It just confuses people, anyway MVEMJSNUP doesn't work if you kill pluto. :(

The International Astronomical Union decides on the status on solary system objects, and it issued a press release in *1999* regarding the status of Pluto. It can be found here. While the IAU did not specifically say Pluto is or is not a planet, it certainly did not officially demote Pluto to a minor planet, or assign it to the class of TNOs. Officially, Pluto *is* a planet. Until the IAU comes to an agreement to demote Pluto to a minor planet or TNO, it should be considered the ninth planet. Removing Pluto from displays about "the planets" or changing discussions to "the eight planets of the solar system" is confusing and unnecessary.

Take another example: the face on Mars. There are people who are strong advocates of this, some who are technically-trained and have Ph.Ds. I don't think it is the place of the museum to make a whole extra exhibit on the Face within the context that the scientific community is undecided on this issue (on the other hand I think it would be in their place to present this in the context of mankind's romantic ideas of Mars, including such things as Percival Lowell's canal observations). It is the place of the scientists and citizens who advocate the Face to question the authority and make their case; it isn't the museum's place to do that for them.

I also do not advocate censoring museums, but I do think that museums have a responsibility to present information accurately and within historical context, especially the American Museum of Natural History. I think that by selectively removing Pluto as being listed as a planet when the IAU classifies it as a planet is being inaccurate. Because this was a deliberated decision of omission, it does make one wonder what other museum exhibits are subject to their reinterpretation/selected-omissions.

If the museum wants to take this approach, they may as well include other significant sections to the museum, such as a phrenology section when discussing current medical and psychological techniques. There are some people who still advocate phrenology, so therefore it must be a controversial subject and they should present all sides of this issue. This kind of handling of issues is just a reflection of what passes as journalism these days: no matter what issue is being presented, give equal time to an opposite opinion no matter how insignificant this opinion is considered because this is supposed to show "balanced" and "un-biased" reporting. What it does in many cases is promote very minor opinions and give them legimate status and create controversies that do not really exist.

To present something within historical context is one thing, but an exhibit on the current state of things should reflect the current majority opinion. It might turn out that down the road the international community changes its mind about Pluto, but until then the museum should list it as one of the planets.

Taking into account new precovery data of the object taken by the Catalina Sky Survey on 17 May 1999 (see http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/mpec/ K00 /K00V15.html), the NEODys team has calculated that the 2030 impact scenario is no longer real (see http://ne wto n.dm.unipi.it/cgi-bin/neodys/neoibo?objects:2000SG 344;main .)

As a result of the new data, there has been a dramatic improvement in the orbital uncertainty. In fact, the nominal miss distance for this object is now given as 0.0346 AU on 22 September 2000 (22.89 UT22.19). What this means is that the object will come no closer to the Earth in 2030 than 3 million miles! In other words, the claim that this object may hit the Earth in 2030 has now been completely ruled out - less than 34 hours after the IAU and NASA decided to announce a "significant impact risk" to the world.

It was unwise of the IAU and NASA to rely on the 1999 one-night stand data by the LINEAR team. The IAU/NASA impact announcement was premature and alarmist.

(Thanks to B. J. Peiser for the above.)

My astronomy buddy mentioned that it was recently decided that Pluto is no longer a planet by an astronomical committee (not sure whom), leaving us back with 8 planets again

Your "astronomy buddy" is incorrect. The International Astronomical Union, the scientific arbiters of what is and is not a planet, stated last year that they had no plans to "demote" Pluto from planet status.

First off, this isn't Slashdot's fault (although sometimes the posts are woefully unresearched). The London Times screwed up by saying "United Nations" a couple of times when there's nothing anywhere to indicate that the UN has anything to do with it.

The International Astronomical Union has been around since 1919, well predating the UN, and is headquartered in Brussels. While it's a member of the International Council of Scientific Unions, as far as I can tell, they have nothing to do with the United Nations. Well, OK, they're working with the ITU (which does) and the UN working group on peaceful uses of outer space, but neither of those institutional connections impacts the separate SKA working group. There are many international organizations that operate wholly independently of the UN.

While the SKA project is still a ways from reaching the point of a firm technical plan and seeking funding, there's no evidence they're going to ask the UN for money. In fact, a lot of the funding is likely to come from participating universities (who may in turn, of course, seek grants from their national governments to support their involvement). No UN bureaucracy at all.

The moral? Don't believe everything you read in the papers. Looks to me like the editor saw "International [Astronomical] Union" and assumed it was a UN agency. Not the case.
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When I was an undergrad (I'm an astrophysics grad student now), I spent 1 1/2 years doing research for a radio astronomer who was a member of the International Astronomical Union (as most astronomers are). A significant part of his time was spent lobbying for the SKA, and I got the opportunity to learn a lot about the device.

The main thrust of the Square Kilometer Array is NOT to detect extraterrestrial life. That happens to be one of the flashier goals, but it isn't the most interesting to most astronomers. Since more collecting area=more sensitivity and larger baseline = more resolution for a telescope, the SKA will be the most sensitive telescope ever built, though not necessarily capable of the highest resolution (the USA's Very Large Baseline Interferometer currently holds that record). Some of the many topics of interest that will be examined with the SKA include the large scale structure of the universe, first galaxy formation, the intergalactic medium, figuring out what powers quasars and radio galaxies, pulsars, and the radio properties of main-sequence stars. And, of course, looking for other technological civilizations.

It takes a long time to build huge telescopes, not because they are incredibly complex (which they are) or because they are incredibly expensive (they are, but not prohibitively so) but because governments are the ones funding them, and also because astronomers need to make compromises to that the telescope can serve the most users possible as well and as efficiently as possible. Fifteen years is a long time, but the telescope won't be out of date when it is constructed! Most of that 15 years will be spent lobbying for funds, finding a suitable location, getting the necessary permits, doing feasability studies, developing technology (coordinating radio interferometry between 2 dishes is difficult - thousands even more so!), etc. etc. And THEN it gets built, near the end of that 15 years. And, like the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Array, the Very Long Baseline Array and the Chandresekhar X-Ray Observatory (all of which took 15-20+ years to lobby, fund, design and build), the SKA will once again radically change the way we look at the sky.

Here are a few links for interested parties:
Homepage of the Square Kilometer Array
Nat'l Radio Astronomy Observatories The home of the VLA, VLBI and Arecibo
International Astronomical Union Homepage

From the article:

An agreement to build the new telescope was signed last month at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Manchester.

The International Astronomical Union has a page providing information on this: here.

From the article:

An agreement to build the new telescope was signed last month at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Manchester.

The International Astronomical Union has a page providing information on this: here.

It would be more accurate to say that the Moon is not considered a planet because of one little detail. Doesn't orbit the Sun, but rather the Earth. Something orbiting the Sun is either a planet, comet, or asteroid. Something orbiting a planet is a moon.

I agree, though, the Pluto/Charon pair (Charon, pluto's moon, is probably 12.5% of the size of Pluto (that number has an accuracy of +/-35%, one of the things this mission wants to clarify) - relatively, the largest moon in the Solar system) should probably be considered a pair of minor planets/captured asteroids or Oort objects. However, that is unlikely to happen.

The Working Group for Planetary system nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union. I know the chairman of this working group. He's as professor at the institute where I'm studying.

like buying a name for a star of whatever, you can give someone money for it, but it's not approved at all, bummer! see the FAQ at International Astronomical Union
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