Pluto’s status nowadays as a so-called plutoid and former planet may be official in the latest textbooks, but someone forgot to tell the astronomers.

Public interest in poor Pluto has peaked ever since the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto from planet status in 2006. And it became clear at the museum event that fierce disagreement still exists among top scientists at the leading edge of the debate.

The idea of what counts as a planet becomes even less certain beyond Earth’s solar system, where space telescopes have uncovered more than 300 exoplanets orbiting stars other than the sun.

“No one is writing a law or rule that you have to call them this or that,” said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT. [...]

Source: Space.com – click here for full article

 

 

Pluto, the runt of the solar system, is still a mystery to astronomers in many ways. But thanks to a new study of the dwarf planet’s atmosphere, this misunderstood place is a little more known to us now.

Using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chile, researchers made the first ever quantitative measurement of the chemical composition of the atmosphere around Pluto. The study revealed that the dwarf planet’s air is warmer, and contains more methane, than previously thought.

Source: Space.com – click here for full article