Talk:Pluto

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  • Whether to rename this page either 134340 Pluto or Pluto (dwarf planet) has been discussed multiple times. The current consensus is that the name "Pluto" is so deeply tied to the dwarf planet (as opposed to the god of the underworld or the cartoon dog) that it does not require disambiguation.
  • The article's main image has attracted much criticism. It is however the best image of Pluto currently available. Subbing it with an artist's rendering or a less detailed photograph would diminish its encyclopedic value. The image will be replaced once the New Horizons mission provides us with a better one.
  • This article is not the place to discuss or complain about Pluto's reclassification as a dwarf planet, to suggest alternative definitions, or to compose new mnemonics. Wikipedia is not a forum. Unless a complaint relates specifically to improving this article, it should be left off the talk page. If you have a question about Pluto's reclassification, please see the articles Definition of planet and 2006 definition of planet, or ask at the Reference desk.
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Contents

[edit] Plutoid

Pluto was just named as a Plutoid, a small roughly spherical object orbiting beyond Neptune. It and Eris are the only two so far discovered. This page should be updated to reflect the new terminology. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.7.147.138 (talk) 20:56, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

It has already been added.(prototype) Being an official dwarf planet in hydrostatic equilibrium is far more important than being a plutoid (want a be dwarf planet) that has an absolute magnitude of (H<1) as observed with a telescope. The term Plutoid was created to simplify the requirement for creating a dwarf planet-like category. -- Kheider (talk) 22:56, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Since Pluto is a Plutoid by definition, describing Pluto as a Plutoid in the lead seems about as useful as describing the Earth as an Earthoid. It remains to be seen if the general public or astronomers will adopt the term plutoid since it is merely a sub category of 'dwarf planet'. The category Plutoid was created in 2006,(Resolution 6) it just was not named until recently.(Plutoid chosen as name) -- Kheider (talk) 09:24, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Well, Earth is a terrestrial planet, and all terrestrial means is "of or like the Earth." Serendipodous 14:57, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Pluto belongs to many categories: Former Planet, Dwarf Planet, Plutoid, Trans-Neptunian object, Kuiper belt object, Plutino, and Minor planet. It has also been referred to as an asteroid and comet. In the lead it is only important to mention 'dwarf planet'. -- Kheider (talk) 20:57, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Who did it

MPC and his head Brian Marsden added Pluto to the MPC list of minor bodies (doing their own interpretation on IAU recommendation), so this was extension (some perceive it as overturning the vote which stated that Pluto is not minor solar system object) clearly unanticipated after the vote. GrzegorzWu (talk) 08:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Sources? I have never heard of this particular controversy. It would be pretty silly to keep Pluto out of the catalogue, since if all dwarf planets were to be excluded, then Ceres would be too, and since Ceres is #1 in the catalogue, that would mean that every single object in the catalogue would have to be re-numbered, and thus that every scientific paper on every minor planet would instantly be made inaccurate. Since that was obviously impractical, I can't see how anyone could object to the move. Serendipodous 09:01, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] IAU Dead Link

Under Pluto (Ref 96): "IAU 2006 General Assembly: Resolutions 5 and 6" is dead. This link is also used under dwarf planet (Ref 3) "Definition of a Planet in the Solar System: Resolutions 5 and 6" and cited 6 times. This does not help compare the definition (or background) of Plutoid and Dwarf Planet. Have I found the correct replacement link at: http://www.iau.org/static/resolutions/Resolution_GA26-5-6.pdf ? -- Kheider (talk) 17:51, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I can't read it, since I don't have Photoshop, but if it resembles this press release, then yes. Serendipodous 18:29, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
It's a pdf file; so you don't need Photoshop to view it, just the free Adobe Reader program. Jmsloderbeck (talk) 22:59, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rings on Pluto?

Does pluto even have rings. It seems like it does not have rings though, since no spacecraft ever visit Pluto we don't even know if pluto have rings or not. One of Saturn's moon Rhea might have rings.--Freewayguy Call? Fish 21:40, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

We don't know. Some have speculated that it may be a possibility, given Pluto's violent past, but there's no evidence to support the idea. Serendipodous 05:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
You should read this [1]. Ruslik (talk) 10:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Text-squeeze

The majority of the images in this article are in contravention of the manual of style: avoid sandwiching text between two images facing each other. There are so many images here that it is impossible to avoid this problem without removing some. Is it possible to cut down the images for the sake of readability, or is this just a compromise that the page-layout will have to live with? Plasticup T/C 04:21, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Serendipodous 19:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Discovery of Pluto

Tombaugh discovered the Pluto through telescope in 1930. But before the actual discovery, the presence of Pluto was predicted by an Indian Teacher "Vyankatesh Bapooji Ketkar" in 1911. His paper was published in french magazine. The predictions about the distance from the Sun, mass of planet etc. were 99% correct. No other predictions match this accuracy.Gsuhas (talk) 03:50, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

No one predicted the existence of Pluto. Many people (not just Katkar) thought they had predicted the existence of Pluto, but it was later revealed that Pluto is too small to exert any noticeable gravitational influence. As it turns out, those "predictions" were based on faulty measurements of Neptune's mass. Pluto is tiny; its mass is only one five-hundredth that of the Earth. There is simply no way other than blind luck that anyone could have determined a mass that small without measuring it directly. Serendipodous 06:14, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I've added a mention of Ketakar's planet (actually planets) to a footnote in Planets beyond Neptune. Ketakar's predictions had nothing to do with mass, and Ketakar made no reference to mass at all.Serendipodous 10:43, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Main image of Pluto

I suggest to show the image of Pluto in a smaller resolution in the article (maybe half the size it has now, or even smaller). This would not remove much (if any) information since the original has such a bad "resolution", and it would be much more pleasurable to look at. The fact that no better resolution exists is just as well illustrated by a small picture without visible resolution limits as by the current larger one. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 16:22, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

The image is the default size for an infobox; to reduce it there would look odd. That aside, the image also speaks to the fact that Pluto's distance limits what we know about it. --Ckatzchatspy 17:25, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not add a black border so the image can stay the same size while reducing Pluto by half? I agree it would look better. kwami (talk) 22:24, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a good suggestion. Could you do it? (I don't know how to edit images.)--Roentgenium111 (talk) 14:48, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that the direct image of Pluto (and Charon) from Hubble (given in the "Physical Characteristics" section) has a slightly better resolution than the main image: a square box around one of the photographed Plutos is about 60x60 pixels, while the main image has about 50x50 mono-coloured boxes. So we could just swap the positions in the article to have a nicer "main image", which would even include Charon. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 17:17, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed that the image that claims to be Pluto and Charon from Hubble doesn't seem to actually include Charon, just mislabeled... --Patteroast (talk) 22:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
How do you know? --Roentgenium111 (talk) 14:56, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
He's right. The NASA text said nothing about Charon. Although they didn't actually label the two images, the point of the article was how much better the Hubble images were than anything which had come before. Also, the resolution of the two images was different. My inference is that the small image was pre-Hubble, or perhaps Hubble before its optics were fixed. kwami (talk) 17:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Always night on Pluto

Is it always what we call "night" on Pluto. YouthoNation (talk) 21:56, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

No. At any time, half of Pluto faces the sun. Bluap (talk) 22:07, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
Given its axis at 120°, at high latitudes in winter, night must be decades long. kwami (talk)
But, to us Earthlings, it would still be night, even when the sun is out, because it's dark like night. YouthoNation (talk) 18:11, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
That's like saying it's always night in a cave. Not normally what people mean by the word. Dark like night, yes. kwami (talk) 00:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
And anyway, the Sun's still pretty bright at Pluto's distance; brighter than the full moon, so you can't really say it's always night. Serendipodous 19:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Please

  • In Russian section Pluto is featured article. Please add in article a template "link FA|ru". Article is protected...Startreker2 (talk) 00:02, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Done. Congratulations! kwami (talk) 01:42, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Many thanks. It is my article, I plan to translate into Russian all articles about planets of Solar system. Our articles on these themes bad...Startreker2 (talk) 06:32, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Needing help with references

It seems all references here are to webpages. I need one done for a book that shows that Pluto was being doubted as a planet as far back as 1978. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MrInitialMan (talk • contribs) 16:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

In 1978, James Christy discovered Pluto's moon Charon, which allowed astronomers to measure Pluto's mass, and thus learn how small it was. That told them that Pluto was not Planet X, but I can't think of anyone who doubted it was a planet. That only started happening after 1992, when the Kuiper belt was discovered. Before then, there were a number of astronomers who decided that Pluto would be better described as a large comet rather than as a planet, but they were a small minority. Serendipodous 16:43, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Actually a lot astronomers doubted it was a planet when it was discovered because it was not large enough to show a disk like all the other planets. -- Kheider (talk) 16:57, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Who discovered Pluto?

This is indeed just a small side note, but the discoverer of Pluto was actually Percival Lowell. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.114.63.148 (talk) 15:43, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

No he wasn't. The article should make this clear. If it's not clear, then please let me know what you don't get, so I can rewrite it. Serendipodous 17:09, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Percival Lowell did not discover Pluto get that straight or I will copy paste the article that proves that wrong.Mrs.shipley (talk) 23:50, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mass & Size

Article mentions (in Mass and size section)
but at less than 0.2 lunar masses it is also smaller than seven of the moons
is it smaller in terms of size or mass or both?
Padalkar.kshitij (talk) 18:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Mass. Serendipodous 18:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Can somebody please dig through this complicated article, pick out (since I couldn't) the *actual diameter* of Pluto in layman's terms (say in miles, or feet, or even km would do), and then put that information at the top of the article? Talk about getting lost in the details. Science geeks, sheesh! Ya gotta admit it's pretty comical that this likely single most sought after bit of data has been *completely buried* and as far as I can tell doesn't even appear in the article! Heh heh. --99.245.216.229 (talk) 16:01, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, Pluto's stats are listed right there in the infobox at the top of the page. Serendipodous 16:23, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the table of contents I think you want to read a section called Mass and size. -- Kheider (talk) 16:35, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
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