Astronomers Discover New Planet Out Beyond Neptune (Jun, 1930)
Astronomers Discover New Planet Out Beyond Neptune
The recently discovered planet, already named Pluto, is judged to be the same size as the earth.
The late Percival Lowell, shown above, predicted the planet’s discovery 25 years ago. The picture of the planet was obtained with a 24-inch reflector and is from a 30-times enlargement of the plate. It was taken by Prof. George Van Biesbroeck of Yerkes Observatory at Williams Bay, Wisc. The bright glow on the plate is the near-by star, Delta Geminorum.
If you visit the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ, you can see and try out the actual blink comparator Tombaugh used to pick out the planet from the thousands of stellar images on the photographic plates. A simple but clever device. Not sure who actually invented it.
Rick
Comment by rick — February 4, 2010 @ 1:17 pm
New Planet . . . or *is* it??
Comment by Don — February 4, 2010 @ 1:29 pm
I hope it is NOT the same size as the Earth, or we lose our planet too.
Comment by TomB — February 4, 2010 @ 2:03 pm
TomB: Don’t get too anxious…you do realize this story was in 1930?
Comment by Firebrand38 — February 4, 2010 @ 2:07 pm
Pluto is much smaller than the Earth. We only learned this for certain, though, after its moon, Charon, was discovered, which enabled us to accurately measure Pluto’s gravity and therefore mass.
Comment by John Savard — February 4, 2010 @ 2:47 pm
WHEW!!
Comment by Don — February 4, 2010 @ 3:05 pm
Don: Now I know you’ve seen more than your share of posts on this blog about folks getting outraged over something from fifty or seventy years ago.
Comment by Firebrand38 — February 4, 2010 @ 3:13 pm
I like the “new planet” and arrow pointing to the white spot in the drawing.
Comment by Mike — February 4, 2010 @ 3:14 pm
They can take away Pluto’s status as a planet. But not his status as a dog.
Comment by Rick Auricchio — February 4, 2010 @ 5:04 pm
Rick Auricchio: Well said. Which begs the eternal question if Pluto is a dog what is Goofy supposed to be?
Comment by Firebrand38 — February 4, 2010 @ 5:21 pm
Goofy is a dog too; one that can talk.
Comment by KD5ZS — February 4, 2010 @ 8:30 pm
Fascinating! Does anyone know why they got the size so far out?
Comment by Richard @ The Bewildered Brit — February 4, 2010 @ 11:01 pm
they only got it wrong by about one order of magnitude (in radius; two, in surface area). by the standards of astronomy that’s pretty dead on, actually — especially for an early estimate made in the 1930′s. there are measurements in astronomy even today with much bigger error bars than that.
Comment by Nomen Nescio — February 4, 2010 @ 11:06 pm
Then, now, and FOREVER!
http://www.zazzle.com/i_rememb.....9260820000
I always think of this exchange from “SOAP” when Billy Crystal’s character Jodie
came out of the closet to his mom:
Jodie Dallas:(listing famous people who were gay) …Plato was gay.
Jessica Tate:(pause) Wait… Mickey Mouse’s dog was gay?
Jodie Dallas: Yeah, that’s right mom. And Goofy was his lover.
Comment by StanFlouride — February 4, 2010 @ 11:12 pm
_JUST_ POSTED ON NEW SCIENTIST:
Sharpest ever images of Pluto show mottled world
Pluto may take 248 years to orbit the sun, but its surface is changing at a much faster rate, new images reveal.
http://www.newscientist.com/bl.....pluto.html
Comment by StanFlouride — February 4, 2010 @ 11:23 pm
StanFlouride: Global warming on Pluto. Who woulda guessed?
Comment by Firebrand38 — February 5, 2010 @ 12:11 am
When I was your age, Pluto was a planet.
Comment by George — February 5, 2010 @ 10:58 am
a) Why is it an illustration of our Solar System as viewed from it’s south pole?
Is it to represent how it would appear as seen from Alpha Centari?
Maybe I should be asking why every other illustration is north of the plane of the orbits?
2) KD5ZS…
Yes. Goofy is an antropomorphic dog, As Mickey is a 3 foot tall antropomorphic mouse.
Comment by jayessell — February 5, 2010 @ 2:12 pm
Pictures of planets or moons as shown in astronomy texts or articles are always with the south pole up because that’s the way they appear in telescopes. The image is always reversed. That said, I don’t see any indication in the drawing of the solar system that the south pole is up. In fact, by looking at the directions of the planets shown and their rotation directions, the north pole seems to be up.
Rick
Comment by rick — February 5, 2010 @ 3:35 pm
@ Nomen Nescio. Excellent, thanks for the info! I love astronomy but I know next to nothing about it!
Comment by Richard @ The Bewildered Brit — February 5, 2010 @ 3:42 pm
Jayessell– I think you mean anthropomorphic
Mickey, Minnie, Donald, et all just live across town from me (Disneyland is about 8 miles from my house.) Knott’s Berry Farm is also quite close.
Comment by KD5ZS — February 5, 2010 @ 4:36 pm
If Pluto the dog is Pluto the planet, then Goofy the dog is probably Earth.
Comment by Charlene — February 8, 2010 @ 6:04 pm
Charlene: Hope not. Otherwice Earth suddenly trips over its own feet, get entangled to the scenery/props and says “Hyuck hyuck!”
Comment by Jari — February 9, 2010 @ 1:21 pm
Jari: we seem to be doing that now.
Comment by Toronto — February 9, 2010 @ 5:56 pm
Why was the initial size so far off? Charon I think. It is almost half the size of Pluto, and was only discovered in the 1970s. Even then Charon just looked like a bulge — it took the newest telescopes, Hubble and earth-based scopes with adaptive optics, to actually see Pluto and Charon as 2 seperate objects. So pre-1970s it would have been natural to assume Pluto is much larger than it is.
As for Plutos status as a planet — it was somewhat controversial. Who’d have thought that astronomers were all political, but they are. It seems at the IAU meeting where they voted to demote Pluto, there was still a lot of disagreement.. and some have thought the vote may have been “rigged”. There’s 10,000 IAU members, 2700 showed up for the 10 day IAU conference. But the vote was late the last day, after many had already left, and only 424 members actually participated in the vote.
Comment by hwertz — February 17, 2010 @ 12:02 am
I think it’s not a new discovery at all .
there is no planet as it is mentioned above .
It was just the mistake of the observer
Comment by Rahul — March 11, 2010 @ 4:46 am
Poor old Pluto wasn’t a planet for very long
Comment by Our Solar System — June 14, 2010 @ 4:14 pm