Amature Astronomer: August 2009

Mirror Cast for Mexican 6.5-meter Infrared Telescope

Posted by Esse-Jay | Posted in Earth-sized planets, galaxies, infrared imaging, Infrares Telescope, quasars, supernova | Posted on 13:55

A Collaboration among two U.S. and two Mexican research groups has begun to create the San Pedro Mártir Telescope, which will offer an unprecedented view of the infrared night sky.

** Casting team members at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab loading 22,500 pounds of E6 Ohara borosilicate glass into the 6.5-meter honeycomb mold for the San Pedro Mártir Telescope mirror. Ray Bertram, Steward Observatory, University of Arizona**

With the casting of a 6.5-meter mirror in Arizona August 26, Mexican and American astronomers have taken the first step toward creating a new telescope that will survey infrared objects in the northern sky with unprecedented sensitivity.

The new mirror is destined for the planned San Pedro Mártir Telescope, which is expected to be built at the San Pedro Mártir Observatory in Baja California, Mexico.

When completed in 2017, the telescope will begin the Synoptic All-Sky Infrared Imaging Survey (SASIR) to look for faint infrared sources — ranging from dim, nearby stars to distant quasars — and flashes of infrared light from supernovae and other transient sources.

"Baja has a long tradition of telescopes, and the San Pedro Mártir Observatory is one of the best observatories in the world," said Joshua Bloom, principal investigator for SASIR and an associate professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. "Now, we hope to build on the top of the mountain the world's largest telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy."

Project partners are the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), the University of California, the Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica (INAOE), and the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The estimated cost of the telescope, $200 million, must be raised from private sources or from U.S. or Mexican government funding agencies. UNAM is opening a project office in Mexico City next month, and Bloom is optimistic that money for a preliminary design can be raised by the end of the year, with continued funding to enable ground breaking in 2013. The all-sky infrared survey should start in 2017 and last 4 to 5 years.

"With this unique combination of telescope size, infrared design and survey strategy, SASIR will help us discover everything from the Sun's nearest neighbours to the most distant black holes in the universe," Bloom said. "We believe that SASIR will have a tremendous scientific impact across all fields of astronomy."

**Before being filled with glass, the mirror mold is loaded with 1,020 hexagonal cores. The cores will be removed after several months, when the mirror blank has cooled and been lifted off the furnace hearth, leaving the voids of the honeycomb glass structure. Ray Bertram, Steward Observatory, University of Arizona**

"This is a great scientific project which will fully exploit the superb characteristics of the San Pedro Mártir site," said Jose Franco, director of UNAM's National Institute of Astronomy.

The project began in earnest with the casting August 26 of a "honeycomb" sandwich mirror 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) in diameter by the University of Arizona Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory in Tucson. The mold inside the 2156° Fahrenheit (1180° Celsius) giant rotating furnace holds 22,500 pounds (10,200 kilograms) of E6 low expansion borosilicate glass produced by the Ohara Corporation in Japan. The furnace will spin at 7.4 revolutions per minute for 3 days so that the mirror achieves the desired focal ratio, f/1.25.

The mirror is made by flowing molten glass between 1,020 alumina-silica hexagonal hollow core boxes inside the tub mold. The hexagonal cores will be removed months from now, after the mirror blank has cooled and lifted off the furnace hearth, leaving the voids of the honeycomb glass structure. After cleaning, the finished honeycomb mirror will weigh an estimated 18,500 pounds (8,400 kg).

When equipped with the SASIR camera bearing the largest collection of infrared detectors to date, the San Pedro Mártir Telescope will offer an unprecedented view of the infrared night sky, Bloom said. The telescope will be able to detect objects 100 to 500 times fainter than the best infrared survey to date, the 5-year-old Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS).

The team hopes to find the most distant quasars, which are actively forming galaxies from the very early universe, and detect dim red stars that may comprise the missing mass in the neighbourhood of the Sun. SASIR may also find Earth-sized planets around dim stars.

"This is a remarkably strong collaboration between two U.S. and two Mexican research groups," said Jose Guichard, director general of INAOE. "The project, however, still welcomes other partners."

Provided by the University of California, Berkeley

Are They Adding More Planets To Our Solar System???

Posted by Esse-Jay | Posted in concept of planets, galaxy, International Astronomical Union, JPL/NASA | Posted on 12:06

** Artist concept of planets and bodies in our solar system. Image credit: NASA/JPL **

When kids head back to school this fall, they might have some brand new planets to memorize.

The International Astronomical Union, currently meeting in Prague, is expected to vote on the definition of a planet. The organization, which has named planets and moons since it was founded in 1919, is debating a plan to establish that our solar system has 12 planets.

The designated dozen would include eight of the traditional nine -- Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune -- plus Ceres, the largest known asteroid. Pluto would still be a planet, but in a category to be called "plutons." It would be joined in that category by two other planetary newcomers: Charon, formerly known as Pluto's moon, and the recently-discovered 2003 UB313. The International Astronomical Union says a dozen additional objects are under consideration for planethood, and even more may be added later on.

Since most of us grew up memorizing nine planets, this news of a shakeup in the solar system might be startling. In reality, a controversy has been brewing for years about whether Pluto is truly a planet or simply an icy remnant of the planet-formation process orbiting in the far reaches of our solar system. A new twist was added to the controversy in the summer of 2005, when Caltech astronomer Dr. Mike Brown and his colleagues announced they had found a "tenth planet," an object larger and more distant than Pluto. This object, temporarily dubbed 2003 UB313, is one of the new additions to the solar system under the International Astronomical Union proposal.

In essence, the organization is proposing that two conditions must be met for an object to be called a planet. It must orbit around a star, but must not be a star itself. And the object must be massive enough for its own gravity to pull it into a nearly spherical shape.

The definition of a planet will have implications reaching beyond our own solar system. In the past decade, astronomers have used new technologies to discover planets around other stars besides our sun. These so-called "extrasolar planets" have raised great interest among scientists, who hope to determine whether any of these planets might be habitable.

While scientists in Prague and throughout the world debate the question, "What is a planet," there's one thing most everyone can agree on: our view of the solar system will never be the same.

For more information, visit the International Astronomical Union home page at http://www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/iau0601/iau0601_release.html .

Dust Storm Passing Over Spirit, Mars Recon Orbiter

Posted by Esse-Jay | Posted in JPL/NASA, mars color imager camera, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, solar panels, sprit | Posted on 12:03

** This full-circle view from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the terrain surrounding the location called "Troy," where Spirit became embedded in soft soil during the spring of 2009 **

The amount of electricity generated by the solar panels on Spirit has been declining for the past several Martian days, or sols, as a regional dust storm moved southward and blocked some of the sunshine at Spirit's location. The team operating the rover has responsively trimmed Spirit's daily activities and is keeping an eye on weather reports from observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Spirit's solar panels generated 392 watt-hours during the mission's Sol 2006 (Aug. 24, 2009), down from 744 watt-hours five sols earlier, but still generous compared with the 240 watt-hours per sol that was typical before a series of panel-cleaning events about four months ago.

"We expect that power will improve again as this storm passes, but we will continue to watch this vigilantly," said JPL's John Callas, project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity. "Spirit remains power positive with healthy energy margins and charged batteries. The weather prediction from the Mars Color Imager team is that the storm is abating, but skies will remain dusty over Spirit for the next few sols."

Recent images from the Mars Color Imager camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showed this regional storm becoming less extensive Monday even as it shifted southward so that its southern edge covered the Gusev Crater area where Spirit is working. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, which operates that camera, provides frequent weather updates to the rover team. Weekly reports are posted at http://www.msss.com/msss_images/latest_weather.html .

Meanwhile, in JPL's In-Situ Instrument Laboratory, the rover team is continuing testing of strategies for getting Spirit out of a patch of soft soil where it is embedded on Mars. On Sol 2005 (Aug. 23, 2009) Spirit used its panoramic camera to examine the nature of how soil at the site has stuck to the rover's middle wheels. The team has also used Spirit's rock abrasion tool as a penetrometer to measure physical properties of the soil around Spirit by pressing into the soil with three different levels of force. The team is aiming to start sending drive commands to Spirit in September.

Provided by JPL, California

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission Status Report

Posted by Esse-Jay | Posted in journal nature, JPL, mars color imager camera, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, solar panels, sprit | Posted on 12:00

** Artist concept of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image credit: NASA/JPL**

PASADENA, Calif. -- Engineers for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project have stepped up the communication rate being received from the orbiter as an early step in the process of determining why the spacecraft spontaneously rebooted its computer on Aug. 26.

The latest reboot occurred at 5:42 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (12:42 Universal Time) on Wednesday, Aug. 26.

Data received from the orbiter indicate that this reboot had a different signature from reboots in February and June of this year.

Three new pieces of information are available to guide the investigation. This latest reboot affected some memory locations that had not been affected by the earlier ones. Also, unlike those earlier reboots, this event occurred while the spacecraft was using its backup, "B Side," main computer. In early August, the orbiter unexpectedly switched itself from the "A Side" main computer to the "B Side" computer. And finally, the decreasing intervals between the four safe-mode events this year are also providing clues to the problem.

To help in identifying a root cause in case of a recurrence, engineers had programmed the spacecraft this month to frequently record engineering data onto non-volatile memory. That large amount of data now being received could give an improved record of spacecraft events leading up to the latest reboot.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently has normal power, temperatures and battery charge. It remains in proper sun-pointed attitude and in high-rate communication with Earth. Safe mode is a precautionary status that spacecraft are programmed to enter when they sense conditions for which they do not know a more specific response. While in this mode, a spacecraft suspends non-essential activities pending further instructions from ground controllers.

"The spacecraft is stable and our priority now is to carefully work our way to understanding this anomaly, with the intent of preventing recurrences," Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Manager Jim Erickson, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said Friday.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been investigating Mars with six science instruments since it reached that planet in 2006. It has returned more data than all other current and past Mars missions combined.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, managed the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission for NASA.

Provided by Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Found planet that shouldn't exist

Posted by Esse-Jay | Posted in constellation, journal nature, planets, solar system, stars, wasp 18 | Posted on 11:34

The find, by an international team including the University of St Andrews, is so bizarre that odds on catching it at this late stage in its life were 1000-1. The 'huge new planet', found orbiting a star 1000 light years away, was discovered by the UK's WASP project, of which St Andrews is a founding member.

Newly-christened WASP-18b, the planet is so massive and so close to its host star that it is almost certain to spiral inwards to its destruction during the lifetime of the star. Researchers from St Andrews are currently calculating the rate at which tidal interactions between star and planet will eventually cause the planet's orbit to decay completely.

St Andrews' physicist, Professor Andrew Collier Cameron said, "This is another bizarre WASP planet discovery. The situation is analogous to the way tidal friction is gradually causing the earth's spin to slow down, and the Moon to spiral away from the earth.

"In this case, however, the spin of the star is slower than the orbit of the planet - so the star should be spinning up, and the planet spiralling in."

WASP-18b is ten times the mass of Jupiter and orbits its star in less than one Earth-day. The new planet belongs to a now-common class of extrasolar planets known as 'hot Jupiters' - massive planets thought to have formed far from their host stars that migrated inwards over time.

The discovery, led by Keele University's Coel Hellier, suggests that WASP-18's parent star is about a billion years old - making the likelihood of observing WASP-18b about one in a thousand.

If the planet's remaining life is as short as predicted, its orbital decay should be measurable within a decade.

Professor Cameron continued, "We don't yet know how long the planet will survive, because we don't understand fully how tides operate on the Sun and other stars. It could be half a million years, or half a billion. But if it's spiralling in quickly, we should be able to see measurable changes in the orbit within ten years."

Provided by University of St Andrews

Hubble Captures Rare Jupiter Collision

Posted by Esse-Jay | Posted in great red spot, hubble space telescope, journal nature, jupiter | Posted on 11:11

NASA scientists have interrupted the checkout and calibration of the Hubble Space Telescope to aim the recently refurbished observatory at a new expanding spot on the giant planet Jupiter. The spot, caused by the impact of a comet or an asteroid, is changing day to day in the planet's cloud tops. For the past several days the world's largest telescopes have been trained on Jupiter. Not to miss any detail of the potentially new science in the unfolding drama 360 million miles away.
The Hubble picture, taken on July 23, is the sharpest visible-light picture taken of the impact feature. The observations were made with Hubble's new camera, the Wide Field Camera 3.

Discovered by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on Sunday, July 19, the spot was created when a small object plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere and disintegrated. The only other time in history such a feature has been seen on Jupiter was 15 years ago. This is strikingly similar to the comet Shoemaker Levy 9 that impacted Jupiter in July 1994.
It is believed that impacts of this magnitude are rare so we are very fortunate to see it with Hubble, also the details seen in the Hubble view shows a lumpiness to the debris plume caused by turbulence in Jupiter's atmosphere. The spot is presently twice the length of the United States.

Simon-Miller of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center estimated that the diameter of the object that slammed into Jupiter was at least the size of several football fields. The force of the explosion on Jupiter was thousands of times more powerful than the suspected comet or asteroid that exploded over the Tunguska River Valley in Siberia in June 1908.
The WFC3, installed by the STS-125 astronauts in May, is not yet fully calibrated. So while it is possible to obtain celestial images, the camera's full power cannot yet be realized for most observations. The WFC3 can still return meaningful science images that will complement the Jupiter pictures being taken with ground-based telescopes. This is a natural color image of Jupiter as seen in visible light.

Uranus

Posted by Esse-Jay | Posted in icy rings, outer planetsm nix, solar system, uranus | Posted on 19:29

This planet is about 4 billion miles Pluto and as much as 1.6 billion miles from the earth. It's a beautiful pale blue fuzzy ball and very different from the other planets, it's strikingly blue and almost featureless that it seems surreal and almost like it has been created by some CGI graphic designer.

It has a diameter oh 31,763 miles which is 4 times that of the earth
It takes 84 earth years to orbit the sun
I day on Uranus is 17.2 earth hours

Named for the Greek god of the sky, Uranus has the most off kilter axis of any of the planets in our solar system, at an angle of 98 ⁰ the planet actually spins on its side and this means at one time only one hemisphere is facing the sun and the other hemisphere is in complete
darkness.

**Uranus Tilted on its Axis and as seen by Voyager 2**

The cool bluish colour is as a result of Methane, the methane absorbs the red and orange wavelengths of the sun light that reaches it and reflects the blue and green and its soft appearance is due to something that us that live in big cities are very familiar with, Smog. In the outer planets there is methane that is natural gas, sunlight converts it to complex particles which forms a haze which is the reason those planets don't have a sharp but a fuzzy look to them.

Scientists speculate that Uranus and its Neighbour Neptune formed in roughly the same way, as the early proto planetary disk of gas and dust in our solar system settled, Jupiter and Saturn gathered up the most material and became the largest of the gas giants, as Jupiter and Saturn grew they destabilized the planetary system as a whole and dynamic interactions pushed Uranus and Neptune out to the edge of the solar system at an accelerated rate were they gathered icy and rocky objects. These icy materials have led some to call Uranus and Neptune the ice giants but they are not great balls of solid ice that an astronaut can walk across quite the contrary if an astronaut managed to get out there he will literary be flattened by the immense pressure before he gets a few 100 miles.

While the Gas giants Jupiter and Saturn have wild weather patterns, Uranus is rather calm in comparison, it is the only planet in our solar system doesn't have an internal heat source and is unique in this respect., Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune all have heat coming from deep within the planet which helps drive the circulation and this explains the banded structure of the clouds we see on those planets.

Uranus was discovered by Astronomer William Herschel in 1781, at the time the only known planets were the 6, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all of which were visible to the naked eye from earth, he first saw Uranus through a telescope and it was the first planet to be discovered using a telescope. Herschel being an armature astronomer, professional musician and an optometrist had the tools and knowledge to design the best telescopes in the world at the time.

**Replica of the telescope with which Herschel discovered Uranus with**

In 1977 NASA's Kuiper airborne observatory made another discovery about Uranus, out to watch the passing of the planet in front of a star but as Uranus closed in, the star winked several times as it neared the planet and several more times as it emerged on the other side, this winking or flickering was actually the star passing behind 5 planetary rings features only before seen on Saturn. More observation from the ground and also from the Voyager spacecraft confirmed the rings existence [ insert ring photo here], observations made from the Hubble Space Telescope in 2005 found a 2^nd set of rings orbiting twice and far away from the planet as the previously known rings. Uranus' rings are dim and thin made of dark dusty rocks and do not reflect as much sunlight as Saturn's thick icy rings. The rings were probably formed by the impact of a meteor or a comet with one of the planets 27 moons, the inner rings may be a result of collisions between the inner moons themselves, as the 13 inner moons swarm and dash around the planet at astonishing speeds orbiting the planet in at least a day and other in about 12 hours, compare this to our moon which takes 28 days to orbit a planet 4 times smaller is quite something. Moons like Cupid and Belinda are being watched by scientists as they are expected to collide in the near future, travelling just a few hundred miles apart and at unbelievable speeds they r expected to draw closer to each other due to gravitational forced and will eventually collide, this will be bad news for the moons but good news for the rings and the debris from the collision will add more material to the existing rings or form a new set of rings.

**Uranus and its Moons in orbit**

Neptune

Posted by Esse-Jay | Posted in clouds, great dark spot, great red spot, inner heat sunlight, neptune, outer planetsm nix | Posted on 18:54

This is Uranus' sister planet and it is 3 billion miles away from the sun. After the exclusion Neptune is now the outer most planet in our solar system

It was named for the Roman god of the seas
Its 2.68 Million miles from Earth
Its Diameter is 30,775 miles
Its takes 168.4 Earth years to orbit the Sun
I Day on Neptune is 16.1 Earth Hours Long

Like all other outer planets Neptune rotates much faster than the Earth and this fast rotation helps create the violent wind speeds. Neptune has the fastest winds in our solar system, its great dark spot which surfaces and disappears without warning with winds up to 1000 miles an hour averaging at about 750 miles an hour raging in the upper atmosphere. Scientists do not know why winds on Neptune blow 2 to 3 times faster than on the gas giants like Jupiter and its great red spot, an energy source to heat the air is a key factor in wind creation, on Earth that source is the Sun, but Neptune which is 30 times further away from the Sun than the Earth and gets one 900^th as much solar energy which is not enough to power Neptune's colossal winds so scientists believe that Neptune gets additional power from within. Measurements taken by Voyager 2 showed that Neptune radiated twice as much heat from its interior as it gets from the Sun which is the highest rate of heat out flow to in flow of any planet in our solar system, but why the interior of Neptune generates that much heat is still eluding scientists. This internal heat also explains the convection of the gas in Neptune's atmosphere that leads to fascinating cloud patterns varying from bright white to featureless blue, it also contributes to the band formation of the coulds around the planet.

** Bright blue clouds that surround the planet Neptune consist mainly of frozen methane. Winds that carry these clouds may reach speeds up to 700 miles per hour. Image credit: NASA/JPL**

In 1989 Voyager 2 snapped a picture of Neptune that showed a huge storm, s great dark spot in its southern hemisphere stretching 8000 miles across, the storm resembled Jupiter's great red spot, 5 years after the dark spot was discovered when the Hubble telescope was aimed back to Neptune the dark spot was gone but this didn't mean that that was the end of violent storms on Neptune, astronomers discovered another dark spot but this time it was on the northern hemisphere. The dark spot storms on Neptune come and go on a shorter time scale than red spot storms on Jupiter that had been raging for over 300 years. The storm systems on Neptune are transient and eccentric, scientists observed the dark spot storms on Neptune and found that the oscillated a few thousand miles within a span of about 8 days. The disappearance, reappearance and overall erratic movement of these storm systems manes Neptune's storm system the most unpredictable in our solar system.

Similar to Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, Neptune also has a complex system of moons, 13 discovered so far. Scientists believe that some of Neptune's moons may have originally formed form elsewhere in the solar system and have been captured by Neptune. Beyond the orbit of Neptune and Pluto is stacked full of materials, small icy bodies, rocky bodies and other debris which every so often will collide with each other and get pushed into the solar system, some of these materials that have been pushed in ends up as comets but if these materials are pushed in the right direction and at the right time they can be captured by the planets gravitational pull becoming a moon. Also like the other outer planets excepting Jupiter, Neptune also has a dim ring system.

** In Neptune's outermost ring, 39,000 miles (63,000 kilometres) from the planet, material mysteriously clumps into three bright, dense arcs. Image credit: NASA**

Neptune's largest moon Triton is about the size of the Earth's moon, it is the coldest object in our solar system ever observed by astronomers even more frigid than Pluto. Averaging a temperature of -350°F which is so cold that the Nitrogen which will normally be a gas is an icy polar ice cap on this moon. It is so cold mainly because the surface is so reflective, about 70% of the sunlight that reaches it is reflected back and that much light not being absorbed by the moon means it gets very very cold.

**The icy crust of Triton, Neptune's largest satellite, has ridges and valleys that were revealed in photographs taken by the U.S. space probe Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL**

[Source: The History Chanel]

Pluto and the Man who killed Her

Posted by Esse-Jay | Posted in charon, hydra, mike brown, outer planetsm nix, planet, pluto, solar system | Posted on 18:22

In comparison to the other planets in our solar system, Pluto has always been a bit different, much smaller than the rest and it has three moons, the largest moon is called Charon orbiting it in proportion to its size, Nix and Hydra the smaller and it also has the most inclined and eccentric orbit which is shaped like an egg which causes it to get closer to the sun at some point on the orbit and further at other point.

** Pluto's Eccentric Orbit**

Astronomers after discovering Neptune in 1846 were convinced there was another planet termed Planet X. This search was spear headed by Percival Lowell at the Lowell observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, he was convinced that there was another plant perturbing the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, but he passed away before he could prove his theory. The Observatory assistant Clyde Tombaugh, continued this task to locate this Planet X and in 1930 he took a picture of an object that seemed to validate Lowell's assumption, this image was shown to scientists and the object was named the 9^th planet.

**Original Photo of Pluto's Discovery**

But the questions remained was Pluto the Planet X the planet they were looking for?? Some scientists argued that Pluto does not have enough mass to perturb the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, it was later realized that it was not, as its location was predicted using inaccurate estimates of Neptune's mass, so if Pluto was not the planet that was sort can it still be called a planet?? The term planet was earlier defined as "wander of the sky", it was the things that moved relative to the stars, so to the ancients the moon was a planet so was the Sun but the Earth was not, but when it was found that the Earth moved around the Sun and the moon orbited the Earth, the definition of planet was changed and the Earth became a Planet and the Sun and Moon were out and then there were 6, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury and then Uranus and Neptune were discovered based on this new definition of planets. Although it was found to be smaller that our moon, Pluto was originally thought to be as large as Mars so Tombaugh discovery was dubbed the 9^th Planet called Pluto.

Because of its great distance from the sun, Pluto takes its name from the Roman god of the underworld
At its closest orbit Pluto is 2.7billion miles from the earth
Its diameter is 1485 miles
It takes 248 earth years to orbit the sun
The length of a day on Pluto is 6.4earth days

Pluto is so far away that even with the Hubble space telescope we can only get images of about 4 pixles across and from what we can see some parts are dark as coal and other parts are as white as ice. Scientists believe the bright area of the planet are made of 3 types of ice, one is carbon monoxide, the 2^nd is nothing which is the same as natural gas and the 3^rd is nitrogen which is the same thing we have here in our atmosphere. The dark areas are most probably solid rock which contain silicates, carbon, oxygen etc not unlike our rocks here on earth. Pluto's distance from the sun makes it a very dim place because of the amount of sunlight reaching the planet another consequence the distance makes Pluto the coldest place in our solar system with an average temperature of -388⁰ F. Also because of its small size and low density its gravity in comparison to earth is far weaker as its gravity is ⅟15^th that of the earth.

**Hubble's Photograph of Pluto showing the light and dark areas**

For more than 75years Pluto has held the title the 9^th planet in our solar system, so what changed??

Meet Mike Brown CALTECH Astronomer and the man who killed Pluto

CALTECH astronomer equipped with the Palomar observatory 48inch telescope was looking for Pluto sized worlds at the far reaches of our solar system and in 2005 he found one, an object bigger than Pluto with its own moon both orbiting the sun. So if Pluto is a planet and has been for 75 years, why wouldn't Brown's object be a planet too?? Brown's discovery is 5% bigger than Pluto and probably made up of the same material rock on the inside and ice on the outside and a thin layer of frost on the outside which sometimes puffs up into the atmosphere and sometimes it doesn't, It has a moon the orbits it once every 16 to 17 Earth days and Pluto also has a moon that orbits it in about the same time frame, these are just some of the similarities Brown's object has with Pluto. Brown's object was named Eris after the Greek god of discord and its moon was named Dysnomia.

** Artist impression of Eris and Dysnomia. Eris is the main object, Dysnomia the small grey disk just above it. The flaring object top-left is the Sun**

Brown's object was named appropriately as it set in motion debates and arguments in the scientific community on the definition of a planet, if Eris will become our 10^th planet or will Pluto sized planets be reclassified as a whole. This argument was tabled in 2006 at the International Astronomical union meeting in Prague and put to a vote and the Term planet was redefined. This definition removed Pluto and Pluto sized planets from being termed planets, this had nothing to do with Pluto becoming less important or too small the issue was pressed because more was learned about Eris and other large Kuiper belt objects. The kipper belt is a 3.5 billion mile wide region in the outer solar system near Pluto and is home to hundreds of thousands of icy objects, the first of which was discovered in 1992.

By the IAU definition " A planet is a spherical object that orbits the sun and clears out the area around its orbital path, since as the area around Pluto is filled with other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto in the instance is not classified as a planet and thus ended its 75year reign as the 9^th planet in our solar system which now comprised of 8 planets and objects like Pluto and Eris are now termed dwarf planets and under this new classification Ceres the largest asteroid in our solar system is now classified as a dwarf planet.

The IAU vote was just supposed to redefine the term planet and in the process it eliminated one, there are scientists who refuse to agree with this conclusion that Pluto is no longer classified as a planet and keep trying to get back its title as planet.

[Source: The History Channel]

Amature Astronomer