Flyby appears successful

"Icy mountains on Pluto and a new, crisp view of its largest moon,
Charon, are among the several discoveries announced Wednesday by NASA's
New Horizons team, just one day after the spacecraft’s first ever Pluto
flyby."

(Charon itself appears new and crisp ... due to lack of craters)

URL:http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/from-mountains-to-moons-multiple-discoveries-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-pluto-mission

/dps

--
The presence of this syntax results from the fact that SQLite is really
a Tcl extension that has escaped into the wild.
http://www.sqlite.org/lang_expr.html

On Thursday, July 16, 2015 at 9:40:50 PM UTC+12, snidely wrote:
"Icy mountains on Pluto and a new, crisp view of its largest moon,
Charon, are among the several discoveries announced Wednesday by NASA's
New Horizons team, just one day after the spacecraft's first ever Pluto
flyby."

(Charon itself appears new and crisp ... due to lack of craters)

URL:http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/from-mountains-to-moons-multiple-discoveries-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-pluto-mission

/dps

--
The presence of this syntax results from the fact that SQLite is really
a Tcl extension that has escaped into the wild.
http://www.sqlite.org/lang_expr.html

Ann Druyan approved Erik Wernquist's request to put Carl Sagan's voice back on his wonderful film Wanderers!

This is a great video that explains why we are so excited about New Horizons visiting Pluto!

Planets are not like stars. Stars stay in the same place all the time. Planets, wander. The name planet means 'wanderer'.

That's why they appeal to us. Because we are wanderers too! That capacity to wander is probably why we are alive today. It is also how we will survive in the future. This is a film about the planets of our solar system, and our relationship to them:

Wanderers

https://lnkd.in/eF3M_vd

"JF Mezei" wrote in message
web.com...

BTW, during yesterday's press conference, I noticed the NASA scientists
used "small planet" in reference to Pluto.

Has Pluto regained its planet status ? (appartently it is a tad bigger
than originally thought)



No, it's still a dwarf planet.

Which is not as big a deal as people seem to care.
That term is only of importance to scientists who study it.

call it a planet if you want. Or a teapot. Just don't call it Goofy.

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On Friday, July 17, 2015 at 4:25:37 AM UTC+12, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
"JF Mezei" wrote in message
web.com...

BTW, during yesterday's press conference, I noticed the NASA scientists
used "small planet" in reference to Pluto.

Has Pluto regained its planet status ? (appartently it is a tad bigger
than originally thought)



No, it's still a dwarf planet.

Which is not as big a deal as people seem to care.
That term is only of importance to scientists who study it.

call it a planet if you want. Or a teapot. Just don't call it Goofy.

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

Colbert and Tyson - discuss planetary status
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jXazEYi3P8

Tyson says we should demote Mercury Venus Earth and Mars as well!

As we learn more about other planetary systems.

2299 worlds found by Kepler, imaged in one video
https://vimeo.com/47408739

Our conception of what a planet is will change, as it has in the past.

The categorization of Ceres is instructive. Ceres has changed more than once and has been the subject of some disagreement.

Johann Elert Bode believed Ceres to be the "missing planet" he had proposed to exist between Mars and Jupiter.

Ceres was assigned a planetary symbol, and remained listed as a planet in astronomy books and tables along with Pallas, Juno, and Vesta from 1801 through 1850s.

Because there are such a large number of these small planets, they were re-classified as asteroids.

The same thing happened with Pluto. There were dozens and then hundreds of objects discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky survey, and that's why Pluto got demoted since it had a lot of characteristics in common with them.

https://vimeo.com/96874127

New Horizons Principal Investigator asked recently at an Explorers Club meeting, how many planets do you think there are? 9? that's so 20th century. 8? That's so early 21st century! What would you say to HUNDREDS! By the end of the 21st century astronomers will reclassify what it means to be a planet. Sure there will be various types - gas giants, rock balls, ice balls, and others. But they'll very likely conclude that if you can shape yourself into a ball due to gravity (not surface tension) - then you sir or madam, are a planet.

https://vimeo.com/87092212

This means that the solar system and all other star systems have hundreds of notable planets. Dr. Stern pointed out that just as the Earth has 8 great river basins, it has thousands of large rivers - each with a name, an ecology. So too will science recognise there are hundreds of planets circling our star.

So what? What does that mean for us? Well, the existence of all these planets, stands as an open invitation to travel the road to them. Are we up to the challenge? Of course we are.

https://vimeo.com/108650530

How could merely observing these points of light from home, ever have been enough?

Here is one man's tribute to the first epoch of interplanetary exploration. There will be others.

https://vimeo.com/132183032

On Friday, July 17, 2015 at 3:56:05 PM UTC+12, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:


Planets are not like stars. Stars stay in the same place all the time.


No they don't. They're just a lot farther away.

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

You ever see a star wander? I didn't think so!

Fred you're such a fool. lol.

For humans, situated in the Earth moon system, the stars don't move in any way that's detectible without instruments. The planets on the other hand move through the sky against the backdrop of apparently non-moving stars. Which is why they're called wanderers.

This video explains why we called wandering stars planets.

https://vimeo.com/132183032

In article ,
says...

"JF Mezei" wrote in message
web.com...

BTW, during yesterday's press conference, I noticed the NASA scientists
used "small planet" in reference to Pluto.

Has Pluto regained its planet status ? (appartently it is a tad bigger
than originally thought)



No, it's still a dwarf planet.

Which is not as big a deal as people seem to care.
That term is only of importance to scientists who study it.

call it a planet if you want. Or a teapot. Just don't call it Goofy.

It's important because Pluto is very likely a member of the Kuiper belt,
which means it is just one of very many dwarf planets that orbit the
sun.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

"JF Mezei" wrote in message
web.com...

BTW, during yesterday's press conference, I noticed the NASA scientists
used "small planet" in reference to Pluto.

Has Pluto regained its planet status ? (appartently it is a tad bigger
than originally thought)



No, it's still a dwarf planet.

Which is not as big a deal as people seem to care.
That term is only of importance to scientists who study it.

call it a planet if you want. Or a teapot. Just don't call it Goofy.

It's important because Pluto is very likely a member of the Kuiper belt,
which means it is just one of very many dwarf planets that orbit the
sun.


So if I redefine 'Kuiper Belt' to extend inward to the asteroid belt,
Jupiter is now a "dwarf planet". Pluto (and Charon) are very dense
for Kuiper objects. I'm going with 'planet'.

As for the 'has cleared its orbit by gravitational influence'
requirement that they like to fail Pluto on, what about all the
Earth-crossing asteroids. Hey, EARTH isn't a planet!

Yes, all of the chosen names are rather arbitrary. Like English
spelling "rules" there are likely very many exceptions to any "rule"
about what to call these things. :-/

It's not even my field, so I personally don't care much what they call
them all. But, being so far out, the "dwarf planets" in the "Kuiper
Belt" generally appear to have a lot more volatiles than the rocks in
the asteroid belt. That's interesting at least, from a scientific point
of view.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

"JF Mezei" wrote in message
web.com...

BTW, during yesterday's press conference, I noticed the NASA scientists
used "small planet" in reference to Pluto.

Has Pluto regained its planet status ? (appartently it is a tad bigger
than originally thought)



No, it's still a dwarf planet.

Which is not as big a deal as people seem to care.
That term is only of importance to scientists who study it.

call it a planet if you want. Or a teapot. Just don't call it Goofy.

It's important because Pluto is very likely a member of the Kuiper belt,
which means it is just one of very many dwarf planets that orbit the
sun.

Right, which is important to scientists, not a kid in 3rd grade.

My overall point being is I think folks get a little to worked up in if it's
a planet, a dwarf planet or something else.

Many people don't realize that Ceres (as well as a few others) were once
considered planets.

The definition has changed more than once and may change again.

For the folks who care, they'll be more and more precise about it. For the
rest of us.. let's not get too worked up about it :-)



Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On 7/17/15 8:21 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

"JF Mezei" wrote in message
web.com...

BTW, during yesterday's press conference, I noticed the NASA scientists
used "small planet" in reference to Pluto.

Has Pluto regained its planet status ? (appartently it is a tad bigger
than originally thought)



No, it's still a dwarf planet.

Which is not as big a deal as people seem to care.
That term is only of importance to scientists who study it.

call it a planet if you want. Or a teapot. Just don't call it Goofy.

It's important because Pluto is very likely a member of the Kuiper belt,
which means it is just one of very many dwarf planets that orbit the
sun.


So if I redefine 'Kuiper Belt' to extend inward to the asteroid belt,
Jupiter is now a "dwarf planet". Pluto (and Charon) are very dense
for Kuiper objects. I'm going with 'planet'.

As for the 'has cleared its orbit by gravitational influence'
requirement that they like to fail Pluto on, what about all the
Earth-crossing asteroids. Hey, EARTH isn't a planet!

And if you compare the combined mass of all those Earth-crossing
asteroids to the mass of Earth you get a *tiny* fraction. On the other
hand if you compare the combined mass of all the other Kuiper belt
objects to the mass of Pluto you get something much greater than one.


Alain Fournier

On 7/17/15 10:00 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Alain Fournier wrote:

On 7/17/15 8:21 AM, Fred J. McCall wrote :
Jeff Findley wrote:

In article ,
says...

"JF Mezei" wrote in message
web.com...

BTW, during yesterday's press conference, I noticed the NASA scientists
used "small planet" in reference to Pluto.

Has Pluto regained its planet status ? (appartently it is a tad bigger
than originally thought)



No, it's still a dwarf planet.

Which is not as big a deal as people seem to care.
That term is only of importance to scientists who study it.

call it a planet if you want. Or a teapot. Just don't call it Goofy.

It's important because Pluto is very likely a member of the Kuiper belt,
which means it is just one of very many dwarf planets that orbit the
sun.


So if I redefine 'Kuiper Belt' to extend inward to the asteroid belt,
Jupiter is now a "dwarf planet". Pluto (and Charon) are very dense
for Kuiper objects. I'm going with 'planet'.

As for the 'has cleared its orbit by gravitational influence'
requirement that they like to fail Pluto on, what about all the
Earth-crossing asteroids. Hey, EARTH isn't a planet!

And if you compare the combined mass of all those Earth-crossing
asteroids to the mass of Earth you get a *tiny* fraction. On the other
hand if you compare the combined mass of all the other Kuiper belt
objects to the mass of Pluto you get something much greater than one.


Which is irrelevant if you look at the volume enclosed by each.

Even if you multiply the Earth-crossing asteroids mass to Earth mass by
100,000 to take into account the difference in volumes you still have
something *much* less than one.


Alain Fournier