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[Rocketman]

Asbolus, Bienor, Chaos, Chariklo, Chiron, Cyllarus, Deucalion, Elatus, Huya, Hylonome, Ixion, Nessus, Okyrhoe, Pelion, Pholus, Quaoar, Rhadamanthus, Sedna, Thereus, and Varuna.

I wish there was a model of these planetoids. I'm wondering in what order do these fall after Pluto.


Anyone?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Asbolus, Bienor, Chaos, Chariklo, Chiron, Cyllarus, Deucalion, Elatus, Huya, Hylonome, Ixion, Nessus, Okyrhoe, Pelion, Pholus, Quaoar, Rhadamanthus, Sedna, Thereus, and Varuna.

Grady...I thought you were choking on a beef cutlet....you feeling better, man?

Sorry, I don't know the order of these rocks, nor could I find any quick database.

Becky is our asteroid hunter, perhaps she has some info on these...

[Maddad]

Yanno, they're still not sure that there isn't another Kupier Belt opject out there that's bigger than Pluto. We call Pluto a planet because we're used to thinking of it that way, but scientifically it just doesn't really fit in that group. If we do find some piece of proplyd debris more massive that Pluto then we're going to really have a debate going on about what makes a planet.

[Rocketman]

You are right indeed! Wouldn't it be neat to have more planets though? Just think if we had three of four moons. Here's a thought. What if we had a moon close enough that amatuer rocketeers like myself could send rovers, and stuff to. That would kick butt! I know.. I know.. I'm dreaming big, but hey it's fun that way!

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Pluto is round and has a moon, and although it's orbit is terribly skewed, I think that it's a planet. Irregular chunks of rock, like some moons, don't deserve planet status. If Titan was alone orbiting the sun, we would consider it a planet in it's own right.

The ancient Summerians wrote about 10 planets and a helio-centric solar system.

Two lines of thought...no extra charge.

[Al Degutis]

From cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Animations/Animations.html:

The Outer Solar System

This animation shows the motions of objects in the outer solar system, beyond the orbit of Jupiter, over a 100-year period at 200-day intervals. The orbits and current locations of the Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) are shown. The current location of Pluto is indicated by the large white crossed circle. High-eccentricity objects are shown with cyan triangles, Centaurs as orange triangles, Plutinos as white circles, "Classical" TNOs as red circles and Scattered-Disk Objects as magenta circles.
NOTE: The strange behavior exhibited by the comets (a general heading inwards prior to the mid 1990s and a general heading outwards post 2000) is a consequence of plotting only those comets currently observable (as of mid 2002). Around this date, all of the long-period comets would have been at or near perihelion. Fifty years either side of this date they are all far from the sun. If the full cometary catalogue had been plotted, this effect would not be so noticeable as there would be inbound and outbound comets visible on each pre-2002 frame.

This animation was prepared 2002 July 31 (1.2 MB size):
cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Animations/OuterSmall.gif

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Plutinos...

(snicker)... ;D

[Rocketman]

Busted URLs.

[Maddad]

Chicago said:

Pluto is round and has a moon, and although it's orbit is terribly skewed, I think that it's a planet.

Other Kupier Belt objects are round, and at least one asteroid has a satellite of its own. This is a tough issue to settle on a few simple rules, for sure.

Chicago said:

The ancient Summerians wrote about 10 planets and a helio-centric solar system.

I'd thought that I'd heard about that, but on reflection I realized that they would have been unable to see past Saturn. Somewhere I remember them grouping the Sun in with the planets, but that still only gives you six, not ten. Interesting, isn't it?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

That's part of the mystery of the lost knowledge of the ancients.

Please visit the "Ancient Astronomers" board for a continuation of this interesting topic.