Moon around Kuiper Belt Object

UncleJosh writes "Today's NY Times (free reg rq'd) has a story about the first Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) with a moon, 1998 WW31. The hubble telescope has been used to get information about the size and orbit of the moon. Seems lots of things have moons. Coming more than 20 years after the discovery of Pluto's moon Charon the discovery of a KBO with a moon also follows the discovery of asteroid Ida's moon Dactyl and other moons of asteriods."

Comments

Hubble space picture of 1998 WW31

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted on the Hubble site 7 days ago when this was news.

Re:Too bad this isn't in the main section

[Cy Guy]

[Pluto]'s the largest (discovered) Kuiper Belt object

Which would therefore make Pluto the first discovered Kuiper Belt object to have a moon, making a total of Eight with the seven referenced in the article.

It was later discovered that it was smaller than originally thought. We still call it a planet today because we've been calling it one all along.

Given that there are other Kuiper Belt objects on the same order of magnitude in diameter as Pluto, and that Kuiper Belt objects with moons seem common, isn't there even greater reason to reclassify Pluto? With a mass of just 4% of the next smallest planet (only 1/8th the most massive moon in the Solar System), why should it continue to be singled out from the other KB objects? Isn't science about taking new information and changing our assumptions and definitions to comform with new facts as they discovered?