31 Days of Planets: Ceres

Day 29

I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL 2015!!! That's the year the Dawn probe reaches Ceres! Can you imagine the math it must take to calculate a path to get to a planet? Incredible. It's like aiming for a moving target and taking it fifty years to get there. Actually, NASA launched Dawn in 2007, so that's only eight years, but still! Magnificent. And it stopped at Vespa on the way - a bit of a detour. But still! Magnificent. I'd both love and hate to see the equation.

Now Ceres is a dwarf planet - the only one inside the inner solar system, in fact. It is also the largest asteroid. It was named after the goddess of growing plants, the harvest, and motherly love.

I know the picture is blurry, but just imagine. In two years, we'll have magnificent pictures of this beautiful dwarf planet - close up!

In conclusion, "let's go see the asteroids, let's go see the star-ar-ars! Cowboys, heroes, cops and robbers! Glamour and strife! Bigger than life!"

Pictures from Wikipedia.

31 Days of Planets: Pluto

Day 10

Pluto is still a planet. I know everyone was so upset when Neil DeGrasse Tyson fought to "de-planetize" Pluto, but that's not what really happened. What really happened is that Pluto became special. Pluto became a dwarf planet - one of only two others (maybe). Of course, there are probably billions more dwarf planets, but Pluto gave us the deliberate ability to classify small planetary bodies as "not Earth-sized" and "not-gas giants." Instead of wandering around saying, "well, I guess we should call it a planet because it orbits the sun even though it's super small and different and doesn't really meet the criteria for a planet" we were able to definitively say: "Pluto is a dwarf planet."

It's like saying, "well, I guess we'll call you a hippie because you eat organic food and don't like war and ride bicycles, but your hair is too neat and your clothes are too carefully chosen," instead of "you are a hipster."

Pluto is in fact smaller than Eris and composed primarily of rock and ice. In fact, Pluto may host a hidden ocean. This means, if we run out of water because we humans are good at making bad decisions, we can mine Pluto. But then imagine the price of water! We'll be watching it like we watch the price of gas. 

"8.57 a gallon! Good heavens!" 

"Well that's what you get when you have to mine it from Pluto."

Pluto's atmosphere plays host to nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. There may even be wind on the surface of Pluto.

In conclusion, just remember: Pluto is still a planet - just a dwarf planet.

Image from zmescience

31 Days of Planets: Sedna

Day 6: Sedna (maybe)

The planet Sedna is (maybe) a trans-Neptunian planet, three times as far away from the sun as Neptune. I imagine it would be very cold there. Although it has not yet been formally recognized as a dwarf planet, it is made up of water, methane, and nitrogen ices, and has the longest known orbit of anything in the solar system. One theory suggests that its orbit is evidence for another, larger planet out past Neptune. I like to imagine a huge other planet, one that is way bigger than Jupiter - just enormous! But dark, which makes it hard to see. And it's probably teeming with life that scurries around making nitrogen iced-coffee and digging holes.

Sedna was originally named 2003 VB12, but was renamed after the Inuit goddess of the sea, who is thought to live at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean - also a very cold place. In every single version of the Sedna myth, she gets thrown into the sea and her fingers get chopped off (or fall off) as she tries to cling to the Kayak, and then she sinks the the bottom and becomes the ruler of the underworld or a mighty sea goddess or commander of the fish of the sea. Her fingers became seals and walruses and whales.

Hopefully the same thing didn't happen to the planet - being rejected by it's father, having its fingers cut off and turned into sea creatures, although one theory suggests that it was pulled into its orbit by a passing star, or captured from another star system - like Sedna was captured by the sea.

Here is what Sedna looks like to us right now:

And here is what an artist suggests Sedna might look like: 

And, just to give some perspective, this is what Sedna, Inuit goddess of the sea might look like: 

In conclusion, Sedna (the maybe planet) is intensely intriguing, and I hope they soon discover what exactly it is.

Photos from Wikipedia and DeviantArt.

31 Days of Planets: Eris

Day 5: Eris

Eris is a real planet inside our solar system. Not a myth. Not some suddenly-appearing planet made up by crazy people. Some people claim that the planet Nibiru is actually Eris. This is not true.

Eris is a dwarf planet, probably bigger than Pluto. It resides past Neptune, and is known as a trans-Neptunian dwarf planet. It is the farthest known natural body in our solar system. It has one moon, Dysnomia, and the two were discovered in 2005. Eris was originally known as Xena, or Planet X.

Eris played an important role in modern astronomy - it forced scientists to differentiate between a planet and a dwarf planet. Many people were very upset when Pluto got "downgraded" from a planet - but in truth Pluto is still a planet, just a dwarf-planet. This is an important distinction because as we continue to discover more and more objects out in space, each with unique characteristics, we will have to have some way to classify them - just as scientists classify species and rocks and everything else imaginable. Then our human obsession with organizing everything will slowly be fulfilled in the arena of giant rock-like objects in space.

So what is a planet? you ask. Well, a planet orbits the sun, is massive enough for its own gravity to make it round, and has cleared its neighborhood of smaller objects around its orbit. This definition currently only applies to our solar system, but I'm sure eventually they'll expand it to "orbits a star" and then name everything else differently. Dwarf planets orbit the sun, is massive enough that its shape is controlled by gravitational forces, but hasn't cleared the neighborhood. Dwarf planets are like kids that like to play with other kids. Big planets are like grownups that build giant fences around their yard and call the cops if anyone cuts across the grass.

This is photo taken by the Keck telescope in Hawaii: 

This is an illustration of what Eris and Dysnomia might look like:

In conclusion, Eris is the first of many (planets, but not necessarily in our solar system). I can't wait to see what else is out there!

Pictures from NASA.