Lay off the diet pills

It seems that Pluto has been kicked in the shins again, this time by Eris. Last year the International Astronomical Union voted after eight days of contentious debate, to redefine what a planet is and Pluto was demoted to the status of a dwarf planet.

Only 424 astronomers were allowed to vote on the new definition out of approximately 10,000 professional astronomers worldwide. Pluto was discovered on Feb 18, 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh and it has been debated then since whether Pluto ever was a planet. Under the initially proposed definition, both Pluto and Charon, it's moon, would have been accepted as planets but they have both been demoted to also ran status because it is felt they are part of a sea of other objects that occupy the same region. The remaining eight planets all have clearly defined cleared space within their oribits in our solar system.

"I'm embarassed for astronomy, less than 5 percent of the world's astronomers voted," said Alan Stern, leader of NASA's New Horizon's mission to Pluto and a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute.

Stern feels that the language used in the resolution is flawed by requiring that a planet "has cleared the neighborhood around it's orbit." Jupiter has been shown to have 50,000 trojan asteroids which orbit in pace with the planet and Earth, Neptune and Mars all have asteroids for neighbors. Not only has Stern's "planetary mission" been demoted but Mike Brown of Caltech has no longer "discovered" the 10th planet with his temporarily named object, 2003 UB313.

Stern will be 56 years old when the newly launched New Horizon's spacecraft begins taking photos of Pluto and Charon in it's approach to them in 2014. It is planned to fly within 6,000 miles of Pluto where it will analyze the surface temperature and composition, generate high resolution maps of both Charon and Pluto and glance back over it's shoulder to try and catch a glimpse of an atmosphere, rings and the contours of the surfaces. New Horizon's mission, if successful, may answer many of the questions astronomers have debated for so long about Pluto and it's surroundings.

That kick in the shin though has come from Eris, the formally known as 2003 UB313. Using the Keck Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope, Brown and graduate student Emily L Schaller have calculated the mass of Eris at 27 percent more than Pluto.

"Pluto and Eris are essentially twins - except that Eris is slightly the pudgier of the two," said Brown.

After suffering the indignity of being demoted from planet status, Pluto has now lost it's status as the largest "dwarf planet" to it's rival Eris, who is named for the Greek goddess of all things...... rivalry.