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Astronomy and terrestrial photography have somewhat different requirements. The telescope sensor is probably huge, each active site has to be as large as possible to gather any stray photons. Typical cameras are APS-C sized or less...

Correct. The LMI's CCD is 6144x6160 15um pixels (92.16 mm x 92.40 mm) ref, or 8500 mm^2; this is over 20x APS-C, 10x full-frame 35mm, and 6x the 9um KAF-16803 (and its 12um sister KAF-9000) mentioned in a sibling post.

For comparison, an APS-C sensor with the same size (15um pitch) pixels would be ~1650x1100; summing over nxn pixel bins to get a resolution in that vicinity from a higher-resolution APS-C CCD will be close, but somewhat less sensitive, as more pixels means less fill factor.

they're more interested in being 'fast' rather then 'sensitive'.

What?! You know fast and sensitive (in the context of photography) are synonyms, right?

First, the submitter got the value wrong. The Large Monolithic Imager (LMI) has 36 MPixels (technically, it has 6144x6160 = 37,847,040 pixels), not 16 MPixels.

http://www.lowell.edu/dct_instruments.php

Second, being a scientific instrument, it has a rather lot of requirements that your Nikon doesn't; the number of pixels is only one of several parameters engineers trade against each other when building a camera for scientific use.

The Lowell observatory has a nice property and good tour, including the telescope and the original photographic plates used to discover Pluto. If you're going to the Grand Canyon, it's pretty close. You can do it in a half-day. I suggest reading, "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" by Mike Brown to round out the experience (or the audiobook, since you're driving).

You have to see the orbital progression to get over the thought that it's just another speck of light noise. Here is a larger image showing the position of the planet from 2004 and 2006. Also, here is the url for the release showing the image of HR 8799 with its 3 planets.

If there is a life on earth ending event occurring from some asteroid they COULD find, does it matter at all? There is nothing we can do about it anyway.

Such a system exists. It works on the simple principle that asteroids move while stars do not. I believe they use wide field of view lenses. I know they cost much more than $200.

Existing systems include (Wikipedia)
        * The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) team
        * The Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) team
        * Spacewatch
        * The Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS) team
        * The Catalina Sky Survey (CSS)
        * The Campo Imperatore Near-Earth Objects Survey (CINEOS) team
        * The Japanese Spaceguard Association
        * The Asiago-DLR Asteroid Survey (ADAS)

Such a registry exists
ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/elgb/astorb.html

Naming rights belong to the discovering team, which is actually a bit of a sore point since these systems are SOO much more efficient at finding comets than amateur astronomers. So it's almost impossible to find and name something after yourself. It is simply given a number designation followed by the acronym of the team which found it.

Mining rights? Err... Yeah... Right.

This could mean a large body of water or that the planet is mostly water (like Earth). Water = life

If it was, I doubt that it could support water-based life as we know it. That water would be ice. Solid ice. All the way through. Since most scientists estimate the surface temperature of Pluto is colder than liquid nitrogen, and this is even further out (meaning colder), I wouldn't get your hopes up.

(BTW, the article actually does say it is made of ice and rock. And yes, it apparently does come closer than Pluto at some points in its orbit, but it'd still be pretty cold. Any life that could survive at 35 AU would almost certainly be killed at 51 AU.)

Tombaugh discovered Pluto using 13" astrograph telescope which is still at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. link
It can be seen by the general public as part of their day walking tour.

"...That nuclear material could have an unmeasureable detrimental effect on any life there is there"

Doubtful, Europa's surface is continually bombarded by huge amounts of radiation accelerated by Jupiter's magnetic field(created by the Io flux torus), it is almost certinaly quite sterile.

Even assuming the radioactive reactor eventually gets subducted back down into the oceans of Europa, big deal, Europa's oceans are thought to be at least 2 times as voluminous as all of Earth's oceans combined. One relatively small nuclear reactor (small relative to a nuclear power plant reactor anyway) diluted in a volume of water that vast is not going to be an issue at all.

I have a vested, sentimental interest in these places so I'm going to plug them:

The Big Ear telescope, operated by Ohio State University, was built on the grounds of Perkins Observatory, between Columbus and the town of Delaware. Delaware is the location of my alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan University, which owns and operates Perkins as a public outreach center. (OSU used to have some financial involvement, but pulled out a few years ago.) In other words, Perkins is no longer a research observatory: it is entirely dedicated to educating the public about astronomy and allowing people to look through their telescopes. (In other words, it's awesome.)

For a couple years after Big Ear had stopped being used it just stood there on the property. I remember taking a walk around the grounds in 1998 with a friend, peaking in the windows of the little building with the control room, filled with junk. It was sort of sad to see it so neglected. Even worse, the land on which it sat had been sold by my school to the neighboring golf course. We actually ran into a golfer while we were there, and he took the time to tell us how much he wished they would tear the telescope down so they could extend the driving range. And not too long afterwards, it happened. Big Ear is gone.

There's some really great stories to tell about Hiram Perkins, too, but I don't want to ramble on too long... The short version: Perkins Obs. was the second observatory he built, and at the time it was completed, it housed the third largest telescope in the world. That telescope, now with an even bigger mirror, lives at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, but was still owned by Ohio Wesleyan until around the time I graduated (1998) when OWU sold it completely to Lowell. It's now operated jointly by Lowell and Boston University, which happens to be where I went after OWU. I took two trips out there to use it before I got my masters in astronomy and left BU to come back to Ohio.

Here's a few links to entertain you:

• Perkins Observatory. Make sure the read the history section.
• Big Ear
• Lowell Observatory
• Lowell's page about the Perkins telescope
• Ohio Wesleyan Astronomy Club, with info about the first Perkins Observatory. Some of the pages here are unchanged since I wrote them around 1997. Looks like they took down the page about how run down the building is and saying that we need money from the university to keep it from falling apart.

If you live anywhere near Columbus, I highly recommend visiting Perkins sometime. They have great facilities and a fantastic staff. It's a great way to spend an evening.

I have a vested, sentimental interest in these places so I'm going to plug them:

The Big Ear telescope, operated by Ohio State University, was built on the grounds of Perkins Observatory, between Columbus and the town of Delaware. Delaware is the location of my alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan University, which owns and operates Perkins as a public outreach center. (OSU used to have some financial involvement, but pulled out a few years ago.) In other words, Perkins is no longer a research observatory: it is entirely dedicated to educating the public about astronomy and allowing people to look through their telescopes. (In other words, it's awesome.)

For a couple years after Big Ear had stopped being used it just stood there on the property. I remember taking a walk around the grounds in 1998 with a friend, peaking in the windows of the little building with the control room, filled with junk. It was sort of sad to see it so neglected. Even worse, the land on which it sat had been sold by my school to the neighboring golf course. We actually ran into a golfer while we were there, and he took the time to tell us how much he wished they would tear the telescope down so they could extend the driving range. And not too long afterwards, it happened. Big Ear is gone.

There's some really great stories to tell about Hiram Perkins, too, but I don't want to ramble on too long... The short version: Perkins Obs. was the second observatory he built, and at the time it was completed, it housed the third largest telescope in the world. That telescope, now with an even bigger mirror, lives at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, but was still owned by Ohio Wesleyan until around the time I graduated (1998) when OWU sold it completely to Lowell. It's now operated jointly by Lowell and Boston University, which happens to be where I went after OWU. I took two trips out there to use it before I got my masters in astronomy and left BU to come back to Ohio.

Here's a few links to entertain you:

• Perkins Observatory. Make sure the read the history section.
• Big Ear
• Lowell Observatory
• Lowell's page about the Perkins telescope
• Ohio Wesleyan Astronomy Club, with info about the first Perkins Observatory. Some of the pages here are unchanged since I wrote them around 1997. Looks like they took down the page about how run down the building is and saying that we need money from the university to keep it from falling apart.

If you live anywhere near Columbus, I highly recommend visiting Perkins sometime. They have great facilities and a fantastic staff. It's a great way to spend an evening.

For geographic marvels, I highly recommend Yosemite National Park, and of course, the Grand Canyon. If you do the canyon, try to hike below the rim, instead of just gazing down into it like 99.9% of visitors do. Just be prepared, the rangers have to rescue ill prepared tourists on a daily basis. One of the best hiking destinations in the Grand Canyon is Havasupai Falls, which is on the Havasupai Reservation.

And if you're in the Southwest, you'd probably like to see some other Native American sites. One of the best cliff dwellings is Bandolier National Monument, in New Mexico. Or in Arizona, Montezuma Castle National Monument. Other Native American sites worth seeing in Arizona are Canyon De Chelly National Monument, Wupatki National Monument, Tuzigoot National Monument, and the Hopi Villages, the longest continuously inhabited village in North America. In New Mexico, there's Chaco Canyon, Aztec Ruins National Monument and Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. While in New Mexico, it'd be a shame to miss Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

Another geeky destination in Arizona near the Grand Canyon would be Lowell Observatory, where Percival Lowell discovered the planet Pluto.

Next, I would like to recommend the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, if you like to paddle and portage. This is located in northern Minnesota. And if you're in Minnesota, check out the city of Duluth. It's the world's most inland seaport, and a very cool place, literally. It's located at the very tip of Lake Superior, the world's largest freshwater lake. And if you really want a good Lake Superior experience, check out Isle Royale National Park or at least the Apostle Islands. Both offer great hiking and see kayaking. Those are my recommendations. Hope you can make it to at least some of them! Tim Savage Phoenix, AZ

Actually there are about 100 people worldwide searching for NEOs according to NASA's Ames Research Centre Asteroid Coment Impact Hazards Website.

The most productive NEO search program is the USAF/MIT run LINEAR which has discovered more NEOs than all other search programs combined.

Other search progrms include

• NEAT
• Spacewatch
• Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search (LONEOS)
• Catalina Sky Survey
• Japanese Spaceguard Association (JSGA)
• Asiago DLR Asteroid Survey (ADAS)

I haven't been able to read the article because it's slashdotted, but it makes me wonder why they would have something like the Torino Impact Scale if they weren't going to use it to inform the public. So far only one object has ever has ever been classifed a "1" on the tornio scale, but that doesn't look like it's going to a a problem. But with most NEOs still unidentified the most likely warning we will have is none at all.

Check out this temperature comparison site.
Basically it says that the coldest spot on earth is -128 F (-89 C, 184 K), while Pluto's surface temperature is -378 to -396 F (-228 to -238 C, 35 to 45 K), air actually turns liquid at this point.
So this makes it quite different for any practical purposes.
The article itself also mentions that the water (if any) is probably under 100 miles of ice, which makes Antarctica infinitely more hospitable and accessible.

according to this the International Astronomical Union (IAU) still considers Pluto to be a planet. This is probably mostly due to tradition than to any technical definition, although this press release by the Lowell Observatory meantions reasons like Pluto's atmosphere, its satillate Charon (which doesn't seem like much of a reason for the planetary classifaction given the subject at hand), and that it seems to undergo seasonal changes.

This page shows that Jupiter's moon Amalthea is tidally locked.

This page discusses the case of Mercury, which as I said isn't yet tidally locked but does have a day tidally related to its year. "Although Mercury is not tidally locked to the Sun, its rotational period is tidally coupled to its orbital period. Mercury rotates one and a half times during each orbit."

This page states that all four of Jupiter's Galilean moons are tidally locked.

That took about 5 minutes. Altavista found a total of 499 pages containing the phrase "tidally locked."

Planetlet? Planette? Heck, we already had planetoid.

Actually the astronomical term "minor planet" has long been used to describe the thousands of identified solar system objects that are neither full-fledged planets nor moons. This new one, WR-106, is a member of the Kuiper Belt, essentially a large amorphous cloud of asteroids outside the orbit of Neptune; hence the official grouping Trnns-Neptunian Objects.

This is an exciting class of discoveries. It was surmised for a number of years but only in the 1990s did significant identifications of these objects begin. Now we're reached the hundreds, and there's likely many more to come, as techniques for locating them are refined. (In a nutshell, using computers to do the same flash image comparisons that Clyde Tombaugh used to find Pluto.)

What's significant about WR-106 is its hypothetical size -- which is far from verified. It could possibly be larger than Ceres (d. 570 mi), in the asteroid belt, which up until now has reigned as the largest minor planet. What this suggests is that the larger objects in the outer solar system are by no means all identified and discovered. Heck, there could even be a full-fledged twin of Mercury, or even Mars, way out in the deep dark. It's possible, and discoveries like WR-106 mean you can't just discount that possibility.

The whole question of Pluto's planethood has never really been open. What reached the press was a badly garbled story of disrespect to Clyde Tombaugh; what really happened is simply that the people who track minor planets wanted to include Pluto (and its almost-as-big moon) as part of the TNO group. There's no question, or at least wasn't, that Pluto would be at the head of that class, just as Ceres is at the head of the list of asteroids. It wasn't about downgrading Pluto, but about recognizing it as the first discovery in a vast new universe of discoveries in our outer solar system.

It's not really important to most astronomers what they're called. We've gone beyond the simplistic question of "how many planets, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10?" to the full realization that our solar system is made up of an infinite number of objects, from Jupiter-sized gas giants, to rocks like Pluto or Phobos, down to dust specks too small to see let alone count. The list of numbered asteroids is closing on 20,000, and that's just what we can find from Earth!

The importance of this discovery doesn't lie in the headline-grabbing reconsider-what-you-all-learned-in-fourth-grade aspects, but in how this affects the questions of cosmology and planetary formation, as well as the prospects for the future. If our solar system is made up of so many small rocks, it increases the odds that there are more rock-strewn star systems out in the larger galaxy. If our solar system has ore-filled rocks all over the place, that's probably a good omen for anyone contemplating colonizing the outer solar system.
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I'm sure these kinds of "plantlets" will become ever more common in the future, and some categorizing will have to be done. I don't think people will really accept a new "planet" (unless something really big is found outside Pluto, but still at a reasonable distance). In fact, there has been some debate about whether Pluto should be demoted from its position as a planet, as it is so small and unlike the other planets.

For some discussion about it, see Google hits and for example this text explaining why Pluto should be concidered a planet.

Pluto reached perihelion (closest point to the Sun) on 1989 September 5 at 12:00 UT. At that time it was at 29.66 AU, or 4.4 billion kilometers, or 2.7 billion miles from the Sun. Pluto became the "eighth" planet on 1979 February 7 at 10:44 UT when it came to a distance from the Sun less than Neptune. It will continue in this status until 1999 February 11 at 11:22 UT when it will once again be further from the Sun than any other planet. Its status as the ninth planet will remain undisputed for the next 220 years when it will once again be approaching perihelion.

Crunch, crunch; chew, chew; crow. Pttui! <g>

I meant to type "our own planet"

Here's a good synopsis of the debate:
Pluto really is a planet

Pluto was given "planet" status only as a reward to the discoverer - hell, it's smaller than own moon

• Heat. Venus receives about twice as much solar power than Earth.
• Chemical composition. 96% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes a hell of a greenhouse effect.