why is Pluto the planet special?
822336
read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto\n\ni don't know what you mean by "special", but pluto does orbit the sun, is ball-shaped, does not have an isolated orbit (a bunch of other similar bodies have similar orbits.), and is not a satellite so it is not a planet.\n\ni have been waiting for this since i was about ten.  i knew that pluto didn't fit the pattern set by the major bodies in the solar system so it was an anomaly.  it just felt "out of place".  now that astronomers have found hundreds of other bodies with similar orbits, classifying "134340 pluto" as a planet is even more irrational.  i feel somewhat satisfied, but i don't know how long this will drag on tho.  this was the right thing to do, believe me.  this does not change anything about pluto or the solar system.  this just corrects the mistake of classifying pluto as a planet initially.\n\nmany astronomers consider pluto and charon to be a binary system, but two small bodies orbit that system.  they are called nix and hydra.\n\nincidentally, "134340 pluto" was never a moon of neptune.  neptune did capture triton. this is why triton has a retrograde orbit.
487505
It's actually just a large asteroid, and they haven't decided whether to call it a planet yet. Problem is, they also discovered that Pluto is just a large asteroid, and if they disacknowledge the new planet, they would have to also disacknowledge Pluto.
34826
Pluto's orbit is an elipse, therefore its distance from the earth is actually changing.  However, at its closest point along its orbit it is 2.67 billion miles from earth and at its farthest point it is well over 3 billion miles from earth. Hope this helps
877159
I have been doing a presentation on Pluto is not a planet.\n\nI put up a bulletin board with the pictures of the planets with special pages showing Ceres, Pluto, and Eris.
927189
To answer your second question first (I'm just an ornery cuss), Pluto is still a member of the Solar System. It's no longer considered a planet, though. It is now called a dwarf planet because of its size and extremely anomalous orbit (so look it up already).Just like the moon. asteroids, etc. it is still part of the Solar System.\n\nAs to the 1st part of your question-------Usually, as long as Mickey gives him table scraps instead of that crap from the can.Woof!Woof!
785248
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto\nhttp://www.iau.org/fileadmin/content/pdfs/Resolution_GA26-5-6.pdf\n\non 24 august 2006, the international astronomical union reclassified pluto.\n\npluto does orbit the sun, is ball-shaped and is not a satellite, but it does not have an isolated orbit (a bunch of other similar bodies have similar orbits.) so it is not a planet.\n\ni have been waiting for this since i was about ten when i learned that pluto didn't fit the pattern set by the major bodies in the solar system so it was an anomaly. it just felt "out of place". now that astronomers have found hundreds of other bodies with similar orbits, classifying "134340 pluto" as a planet is even more irrational. i feel somewhat satisfied, but i don't know how long this will drag on tho. many planetary astronomers are satisfied that the definition is rigorous enuf. i can accept that the definition is flawed, but i can not accept that "134340 pluto" is a planet.\n\nthis was the right thing to do, believe me. this does not change anything about pluto or the solar system. this just corrects the mistake of classifying pluto as a planet initially.\n\nthis same thing happened has happened before.  in 1800, an astronomer found a body orbiting the sun between the orbits of mars and jupiter and thought it was a planet.  astronomers finally stopped classifying them as planets after they found several other bodies with similar orbits, and no one thinks ceres, pallas, juno, and vesta are planets today.\n\nmany astronomers consider pluto and charon to be a binary system, but two small bodies orbit that system. they are called nix and hydra.\n\nincidentally, "134340 pluto" was never a moon of neptune. neptune did capture triton. this is why triton has a retrograde orbit
766964
http://www.iau.org\nhttp://www.iau.org/fileadmin/content/pdfs/Resolution_GA26-5-6.pdf\n\non 24 august 2006, the international astronomical union reclassified pluto.\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto\n\npluto does orbit the sun, is ball-shaped and is not a satellite, but it does not have an isolated orbit (a bunch of other similar bodies have similar orbits.) so it is not a planet.\n\ni have been waiting for this since i was about ten when i learned that pluto didn't fit the pattern set by the major bodies in the solar system so it was an anomaly. it just felt "out of place". now that astronomers have found hundreds of other bodies with similar orbits, classifying "134340 pluto" as a planet is even more irrational. i feel somewhat satisfied, but i don't know how long this will drag on tho. many planetary astronomers are satisfied that the definition is rigorous enuf. i can accept that the definition is flawed, but i can not accept that "134340 pluto" is a planet.\n\nthis was the right thing to do, believe me. this does not change anything about pluto or the solar system. this just corrects the mistake of classifying pluto as a planet initially.\n\nthis same thing happened has happened before.  in 1800, an astronomer found a body orbiting between the orbits of mars and jupiter and thought it was a planet.  astronomers finally stopped classifying them as planets after they found several other bodies with similar orbits, and no one thinks ceres, pallas, juno, and vesta are planets today.\n\nmany astronomers consider pluto and charon to be a binary system, but two small bodies orbit that system. they are called nix and hydra.\n\nincidentally, "134340 pluto" was never a moon of neptune. neptune did capture triton. this is why triton has a retrograde orbit
145121
no. The majority of scientists define the main requirement of a planet to be it's gravatational domination of it's surroundings; something pluto and 2003 UB313 do not do; in fact, both Pluto and 2003 UB313 aren't even the size of earth's moon. The main reason there is even controversy on this topic is because Americans were the ones who discovered Puto and the other icy rock and wanted to have some kind of historical placement in the field of Astronomy.
823004
Let's try to see this from Pluto's point of view.\n\nPluto received news in 1930 that the folks on Earth had proclaimed him as a Planet, putting him in a very exclusive group of Solar System inhabitants.\n\nPluto was very flattered indeed.\n\nPrior to this, he had been minding his own business, hurting nobody, as you rightly pointed out.  Well, almost nobody...  There were those pesky little rocks in the neighborhood that he just had to shoo away, like the little toddlers that sometimes walk right up to you in the mall.  But it wasn't very often, and Pluto was generally very well behaved in his 3:2 resonant orbit with the local neighborhood big guy, Neppy-whats-his-face.\n\nBut hey, if the folks on Earth put Pluto with Neppy, more power to you guys!\n\nBut the truth is, Pluto has been around for a long, long time, quietly doing his rounds.\n\nNow, you Earthlings decide to take away - some say "dethrone" - his title as a Planet.  Oh, the audacity!...\n\nBut in reality, the insult is felt by Pluto's friends on Earth (including yours truly).  Pluto heard about the raucous in August, but you know what?\n\nHe's still doing his rounds in the cold, dark outer reaches of our stellar neighborhood quietly and without complaining.  He's been doing it for many millennia now.  Maybe, when the boredom gets to him - or perhaps when a fit of playfulness seizes him - he may send a icy piece of rock heading our way, but I'm sure he'll aim to miss.\n\nPluto is a nice guy.  He never hurt anyone except those pesky toddler rocks.  I'm sad for him, but he knows he has friends down here.  He and his chums in the Kuiper Belt are probably laughing at Earthlings who can't seem to make up our minds.\n\nI heard Xena was about to call a neighborhood party to celebrate her ascension.  She's pissed.  Maybe she's the one who'll hurl that rock at us...
483328
the planet?Pluto is the farthest planet from the Sun (usually) and by far the smallest. Pluto is smaller than seven of the solar system's moons (the Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan and Triton). \n\n        orbit:    5,913,520,000 km (39.5 AU) from the Sun (average)\n        diameter: 2274 km\n        mass:     1.27e22 kg\nIn Roman mythology, Pluto (Greek: Hades) is the god of the underworld. The planet received this name (after many other suggestions) perhaps because it's so far from the Sun that it is in perpetual darkness and perhaps because "PL" are the initials of Percival Lowell. \nPluto was discovered in 1930 by a fortunate accident. Calculations which later turned out to be in error had predicted a planet beyond Neptune, based on the motions of Uranus and Neptune. Not knowing of the error, Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Arizona did a very careful sky survey which turned up Pluto anyway. \nAfter the discovery of Pluto, it was quickly determined that Pluto was too small to account for the discrepancies in the orbits of the other planets. The search for Planet X continued but nothing was found. Nor is it likely that it ever will be: the discrepancies vanish if the mass of Neptune determined from the Voyager 2 encounter with Neptune is used. There is no Planet X. But that doesn't mean there aren't other objects out there, only that there isn't a relatively large and close one like Planet X was assumed to be. In fact, we now know that there are a very large number of smaller objects in the Kuiper Belt beyond the orbit of Neptune. \nPluto is the only planet that has not been visited by a spacecraft. Even the Hubble Space Telescope can resolve only the largest features on its surface (left and above). A spacecraft called New Horizons was launched in January 2006. If all goes well it should reach Pluto in 2015. \nFortunately, Pluto has a satellite, Charon. By good fortune, Charon was discovered (in 1978) just before its orbital plane moved edge-on toward the inner solar system. It was therefore possible to observe many transits of Pluto over Charon and vice versa. By carefully calculating which portions of which body would be covered at what times, and watching brightness curves, astronomers were able to construct a rough map of light and dark areas on both bodies. \nIn late 2005, a team using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered two additional tiny moons orbiting Pluto. Provisionally designated S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2, they will be assigned real names when the discovery is confirmed. They are estimated to be between 60 and 200 kilometers in diameter. \nPluto's radius is not well known. JPL's value of 1137 is given with an error of +/-8, almost one percent. \nThough the sum of the masses of Pluto and Charon is known pretty well (it can be determined from careful measurements of the period and radius of Charon's orbit and basic physics) the individual masses of Pluto and Charon are difficult to determine because that requires determining their mutual motions around the center of mass of the system which requires much finer measurements -- they're so small and far away that even HST has difficulty. The ratio of their masses is probably somewhere between 0.084 and 0.157; more observations are underway but we won't get really accurate data until a spacecraft is sent. \nPluto is the second most contrasty body in the Solar System (after Iapetus). \nThere are some who think Pluto would be better classified as a large asteroid or comet rather than as a planet. Some consider it to be one of the larger Kuiper Belt objects (also known as Trans-Neptunian Objects). There is considerable merit to the latter position, but historically Pluto has been classified as a planet and it is very likely to remain so. Further complicating the situation, one such object (2003UB313) was recently discovered that is almost certainly larger than Pluto. Should it, too, be classified as
1170598
some of the planets wouldn´t be perceptible with a naked eye, and i think Pluto would be as much as half inch away of the sun.\nWhy don't you do some math starting with the actual size of the sun and an average orange to make some kind of scale and do the same with all the planets and the distances. I think you have some work to do.
782617
The better question is what about the planets they found farther out in the galaxy than Pluto.  Why don't we know their names, and why aren't they taught in schools?\n\nThey can take away our little Pluto, but not give us any new planets in return? Boo!
829586
Pluto is the smallest planet, recent reports says that pluto is not further considered as one of the planet cause it is actuallay only 3/4 of the moon...........Pluto has one moon named Charon
547157
*Pluto: officially the 9th planet in our solar system\n*10th planet: nothing officially has this designation.\n\nIf you are talking about 2003 UB313, then there is a comparison to be made.  They both live in a similar part of the solar system, but it looks like UB313 seems to be a bit redder than Pluto.  Pluto is also known to have a transient atmosphere, not measurements of a potential atmosphere of UB313 have yet been published.
973992
Something less than 400 members of the 10,000 member IAU voted under a veil of assumed authority to downgrade Pluto's status as a planet after they rewrote the rule book. Most of the new criteria they established that must be met in order for an object to be considered a planet is met by Pluto. It orbits a star, it has a moon, and it is generally spherical in shape. The disqualifying new rule was that Pluto has not cleared its orbital path around the sun and there are other objects sharing the same orbit. This would mean that if another object enters or is found to exist in the same orbital path of the Earth, the Earth would not be a planet. The IAU also failed to take into consideration as to whether or not Pluto is in the process of clearing its orbital path and just needs a few billion more years.
230967
Pluto's atmosphere is super thin and transient, so I would call it's entire atmosphere a "special phenomena."  Pluto more than likely only has an atmosphere when it is at the point of its orbit that is closer to the sun (periheion).  As Pluto continues on its orbit it moves further away, and the flux of light from the sun will more than likely no longer warm the planet woungh for it to maintain the atmosphere.  What little thin atmosphere Pluto has now will freeze to the surface of the planet over next few decades.
730339
1.  Pluto, Sedna, Eris, Ceres, etc. are still planets but they are a specific class of planets ("dwarf planets").  This is similar to the Sun being classifed as a "yellow dwarf" but it's still a star.\n\nNow that I've got that off my chest, Pluto and Sedna are members of the Kuiper Belt, a collection of bodies that extend from about Neptune's orbit out to where the Oort Cloud is supposed to begin.  The Kuiper Belt is approximately co-planar with the ecliptic but extends farther away from the central plane of the solar system.  This definition allows Pluto, whose orbital inclination is significantly larger than average to be included in the Kuiper Belt.\n\nAstronomers are consistently finding more members of the Kuiper Belt through photographic review.  Most are smaller than Pluto, Sedna and Eris, some are similar in size and there is likely to be at least one more body that will be larger.