Oh great!!! The belligerent and aggressive hallmarks of "short planet syndrome".
Size doesn't matter. That was the message as friends and colleagues
of the late Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto,
gathered on the New Mexico State University campus to protest the
International Astronomical Union's recent decision to strip Pluto of
its status as a planet.
Tombaugh's widow, Patricia, and their son, Al Tombaugh, also participated.
NMSU astronomer Bernie McNamara told the crowd that textbooks shouldn't be rewritten.
"Why not? Because the debate is not over," McNamara said.
The IAU determined last week that a planet must orbit the sun and be
large enough to assume a nearly round shape, as well as "clear the
neighborhood around its orbit." Pluto's oblong orbit overlaps
Neptune's, which led the IAU to downsize the solar system to eight
planets from the traditional nine.
McNamara argued that only about 400 of the union's thousands of members were present when the Aug. 24 vote was taken.
"This was not a statement by the astronomical community at large,"
he said, adding that a petition opposing the IAU definition of a planet
is circulating among the world's planetary scientists and astronomers.
Tombaugh was 24 when he discovered Pluto while working at Lowell
Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., in 1930. He came to NMSU in 1955 and
founded the school's research astronomy department.
His legacy is visible across the city, where an observatory, a campus street and an elementary school bear his name.
Some say Tombaugh's discovery was significant because it took 60
years for stronger telescopes to locate another object with an unusual
orbit like Pluto's, and 73 years before scientists discovered a bigger
object in the area.
"Clyde Tombaugh was an American hero," said Herb Beebe, a longtime
colleague. "For that reason alone, Pluto's status as a full-fledged
planet should be kept."
