Haglund
2003-Oct-21, 06:04 PM
On this page (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planetaryfaq.html#Pluto) NASA set up three general rules for what a planet is supposed to be:
Must orbit a star
It is small enough not to have nuclear fusion reactions
Massive enough to maintain a roughly spherical shape
They also say that by those rules, Ceres might be considered a planet as well. My thoughts: At the same time, Ceres belongs to the asteroids by classification. What is interesting is that there is the Kuiper belt past Neptune, stretching between 30-100 AU from the sun, and Pluto is 39 AU from the sun. By its characteristics it could very well be a very large Kuiper object. IAU (http://www.iau.org/IAU/FAQ/PlutoPR.html) have decided that Pluto is a planet still. Since I suspect this is much because of tradition, I'm guessing it's difficult to draw any conclusions on what would make a planet based on that, because in Pluto's case it would then be about size while in Cere's case it would be other characteristics.
What do you other think about this?
Must orbit a star
It is small enough not to have nuclear fusion reactions
Massive enough to maintain a roughly spherical shape
They also say that by those rules, Ceres might be considered a planet as well. My thoughts: At the same time, Ceres belongs to the asteroids by classification. What is interesting is that there is the Kuiper belt past Neptune, stretching between 30-100 AU from the sun, and Pluto is 39 AU from the sun. By its characteristics it could very well be a very large Kuiper object. IAU (http://www.iau.org/IAU/FAQ/PlutoPR.html) have decided that Pluto is a planet still. Since I suspect this is much because of tradition, I'm guessing it's difficult to draw any conclusions on what would make a planet based on that, because in Pluto's case it would then be about size while in Cere's case it would be other characteristics.
What do you other think about this?