If Pluto Could Talk by Coleman
Pluto adjusted his barrister's robe, fixed his wig more firmly on his head and began, "Ladies and Gentle-astronomers of the jury, is it in the interest of justice to change the rules governing the definition of what constitutes a planet?"
"Since my discovery in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, I have been designated a planet. Day after day Mr. Tombaugh studied the tiny dots of stars covering thousands of photographic plates of the skies. He was looking to find a single dot that moved in the time between photographs. At last, comparing two plates, a dot had moved, a planet was found. On the birthday of Percival Lowell, a well-known astronomer who predicted my existence many years earlier, the discovery of my presence was announced. I was given the name of Pluto by an eleven-year old school girl from Oxford. England. My name has Percival Lowell's initials for the first two letters. It is the name of the Roman god of the underworld. I would like to emphasize this point, lest anyone believe that I was named after that Disney cartoon character, the dog Pluto."
"In 2006, the rug was pulled out from under me by the International Astronomical Union. The Union decided, arbitrarily in my view, to change the criteria of what constitutes a planet. Now they say a planet must orbit the sun. it must have enough mass to pull itself into a spherical shape and it must clear out all other objects in its orbit.
"It is in the third criteria that I am deemed a "failure." My crime? I fail to dominate my orbit. Yet they overlook the fact that part of my orbit crosses that oi Neptune. Do they think that I should clear Neptune out of my orbit? Should Neptune also be demoted because he didn't clear me out of his orbit?"
Apparently the Astronomical Union also decided on weight requirements. It is true that I am only 0.002 X Earth's mass, however, I do have three of my very own moons, named Charon, Hydra and Nix. That's more than you on Earth have, and they say I am too "small" to qualify. On July 29, 2005 Caltech astronomer Mike Brown and his team discovered another object out beyond my orbit. It has been named Eris and is made of the same ice/rock mixture as I am. Now we are demoted and called "dwarf planets.”
"I appeal to the intelligence and the goodwill of you, the members of the jury. Should not there be continuity in the teaching of Astronomy? The change in definition will confuse millions of school children who learned that there were NINE planets. They learned our names by the mnemonic: My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets. They will now have to contrive a new one.'
“I will conclude my case with the words of the children's author, Dr. Seuss, 'A planet is a planet no matter how small.'"
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A Guide To Backyard Astronomy. Robert Burnham et al. (Fog City Press. San Francisco 1997).
How We Will Explore The Outer Planets. Nigel S. Hey. (G.P. Putnam's Sons. New Yorl 1973).
Planets and Moons, William J. Kaufmann, III, (W.H. Freeman and Company. San Francisco, 1979).
Rings In The Solar System, James B Pollack, Scientific American, "The Planets", p. 118 (1983).
Stars and Planets, W.S. Kals, (Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1990).
www.nineplanets.org/pluto.html
www.nasa.gov/worldbook/pluto worldbook.html