Asteroids On The Solar System

Many issues have arisen from the debate whether or not Pluto is a planet. Some astronomers say that Pluto should be classified as a “minor planet” due to its size, physical characteristics, and other factors. On the other hand, some astronomers defend Pluto’s planet status, citing several key features.

Going back to the criteria the three pieces of criteria it needs to meet are, the object must orbit the sun, the object must be a sphere and it must be created and maintained by its own gravitational force, and the object must have a clear path around its orbit of other objects. Pluto does orbit the sun. It does have a spherical shape, but Pluto’s path is not clear, it is crowded with lots of other objects. That proves that Pluto is not a planet because, it only meets two of the three criteria pieces.There are rocks in outer space that are the same size as Pluto! That’s pretty small to be considered a planet. If you look at a comparison of the other planets and Pluto you will see the drastic difference. Pluto is just simply too puny to be a planet. Many people say that it should be continued to be thought of as a planet because it has been that way for a long time and that's how most people know Pluto as, a planet. That doesn’t matter though, just because people are used to it being known as a planet doesn’t mean Pluto should still be considered a planet. Facts clearly show that Pluto is a dwarf planet. There are rocks in outer space that are the same size as Pluto! That’s pretty small to be considered a planet. All in all, Pluto clearly isn’t considered a planet, because it only meets two out of the three criteria pieces to be considered a

Astronomers now label Pluto as a “dwarf planet” because it does not meet all of the criteria to be a planet. It is also not alone in its orbit; it is part of a wide group of small-scale objects that have been detected revolving around the Sun beyond Neptune.

A dwarf planet can be described in many different ways. Some define it as an object revolving around the sun, that is large enough to be surrounded by its own gravity but is not large enough to be gravitationally dominant in its orbital area. You can also describe Dwarf planets as roundish objects in outer space that revolve around the Sun, but Dwarf planets are not moons. Dwarf planets are a lot like regular planets because they revolve around the Sun. A Major difference is that where Dwarf planets orbit the sun that area is full of a lot of comets and asteroids in their path and around them. A few Dwarf planets found in our solar system are Pluto, Eris, Ceres and Makemake, and they orbit in the outer solar system beyond Neptune or the

In the outer limits of our solar system there is a planet unlike any other, Pluto. Pluto was discovered in February of 1930 by an American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh. It is the only planet to have been discovered by an American. All though we have known of the existence of Pluto for over thirty years now, there are still many mysteries surrounding this celestial body. Being the farthest planet has made it difficult to study Pluto, Adding to the obscurity of this strange planet is that the capability to send spacecraft such distances has never been achieved. Through the wonders of science and astronomy, there are many things that can be determined, concluded, and hypothesized about this obscure planet.

Some factors that lead Dr. Tyson to peg Pluto as a dwarf planet are that “the Pluto-Charon system orbits a point in space outside of the physical extent of Pluto itself” and that “Pluto and Charon are in a rare double tidal lock, always showing the same face to each other” (Pg.34, 36). There are binary stellar systems, asteroids, planets, and even binary KBOs, all of which orbit a site in between them; however, planets should not be affected so extensively by one of their moons gravity to form such an arrangement. Likewise, planets don’t become tidally locked to their moon(s), even Earth and its moon, which is struggling to coerce Earth into a tidal lock together with it, has failed to achieve this double tidal lock. Alternatively, the numerous characteristics of Pluto comprise “a long list of properties that are not shared with any other planet in the system” according to Tyson (Pg.33-37, 118). The majority of Pluto’s attributes and features are instead analogous to celestial small bodies of the Kuiper Belt, including comets, asteroids, and other dwarf planets with their eccentric and debris filled orbits and compositions. Tyson points out that “By 1853, it was clear a new class of objects had been identified: the asteroids” and that “Practically overnight, the planet count dropped back down to seven” after the discoveries of objects in

With the progression of technology, we have found many objects in the sky and it became apparent that Pluto might not in fact be a planet. After the discovery of other planetoid objects just as Chiron and Eris, the International Astronomical Union created a definition of what a planet was. An object to had to fit a certain criteria to be considered such. It was then that Pluto was dubbed a Dwarf Planet in 2006.

Much of the evidence can be credited to scientific data and research. For example, In the year of 2006 the International Astronomical Union had identified Pluto as not a planet making it a dwarf planet.This was the ultimate way to declare that Pluto indeed does not meet the qualifications to be considered a planet, but rather a dwarf one.

There are constant discoveries about objects that reside in the universe. This research paper will discuss one of those objects, the dwarf planet Ceres, and will explain exactly why scientists are so interested in this dwarf planet. Inhabiting the space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is Ceres, the largest in the asteroid belt. The discovery of Ceres was in early 1801 by an Italian astronomer named Giuseppe Piazzi. At the time, Piazzi classified Ceres – which he named after the Roman goddess of harvest and corn, as a planet. After further inspection however, Ceres was demoted to being classified as a “dwarf planet which accounts for nearly one third of the asteroid belts mass.”1 The closest dwarf planet to the Sun is Ceres and, as it

Asteroids are a very fascinating part of our solar system. Asteroids are classified as small airless rocky worlds revolving around the sun. Since asteroids are too small, they have not been called planets during the time of their existence. The larger asteroids are known as planetoids or minor planets. Asteroids as a whole, their mass does not even come close to the mass of the Earths moon. This could be a reason why they have not been known as planets. Although asteroids can be seen in any part of our galaxy, most of them reside in the area between Mars and Jupiter. In this are between Mars and Jupiter, you can find close to 200 hundred asteroids larger than 60 miles in diameter. This may not seem like a lot, but that to me seems like a large abundance of asteroids to be kept together in one place at one time.

Asteroids are large or small chunks of rock and metal flying around space up to speeds of 80 000 km/h. These chunks were believed to have formed millions of years ago during the "big bang". These rocks didn’t form any planets and

The remaining objects are all referred to as near Earth asteroids, and are classified as either Atens, with a semi-major axis less than 1 AU and an aphelion distance greater than 0.983 AU, Apollos, with a semi-major axis greater than 1 AU and a perihelion distance less than 1.017 AU, or Amors, with a semi-major axis greater than 1 AU and a perihelion distance between 1.017 AU and 1.3 AU (Dunbar, 2004). Dunbar (2004) also describes one final classification for near Earth asteroids, which are potentially hazardous asteroids, defined as having a minimum orbit intersection distance of 0.05 AU and having a minimum diameter of around 150m (Dunbar 2004). All of these classifications are necessary in order to look at the objects in our solar system, and to determine which objects pose a serious risk and need to be monitored, as well as objects which could become dangerous if their orbit is slightly changed by an unexpected collision or gravitational

Apollo asteroids cross the Earth’s orbit, although most of its orbit is outside of the Earth’s.

These icy objects, occasionally pushed by gravity into orbits bringing them closer to the Sun, become the so-called short-period comets. Taking less than 200 years to orbit the Sun, in many cases their appearance is predictable because they have passed by before. Less predictable are long-period comets, many of which arrive from a region called the Oort Cloud about 100,000 astronomical units (that is, about 100,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun) from the Sun. These Oort Cloud comets can take as long as 30 million years to complete one trip around the

In 2006, the IAU set a definition for a planet in the solar system as the following: is in orbit around the Sun, has sufficient mass to assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (or a nearly spherical shape) and has cleared the neighborhood around the object. Dwarf Planets passed two of the three necessary requirements of the planet test. One is that they are always in orbit around the Sun and the other is that they are nearly spherical in shape. However, they did not pass the test of clearing its neighborhood of any debris. Planets are able to clear smaller bodies near its orbit such as small asteroids through collision, capture or gravitational disturbance. Dwarf planets lack the mass to do so. As a result, they have a weak gravitational force that is unable to keep its orbital influence cleared from asteroids that float around in the Kuiper Belt territory.