My Daily Bread Crumbs 24 Aug 2022

Pluto Demoted Day on August 24 commemorates the day in 2006 when Pluto's status was downgraded from a full sized planet to a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Pluto was the Solar System's 9th planet for 76 years. Given the name of the ancient Greek ruler of the underworld, Pluto was named by an 11-year-old girl called Venetia Burney.

250 Year Orbit

Because Pluto is very far from us - on average it is about 6 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) from Earth, little is known about the dwarf planet. In size, Pluto has a diameter of about 2250 kilometers (1400 miles), which is about two-thirds the size of Earth's Moon.

Pluto's orbit is highly eccentric. In other words, its orbit around the Sun is not perfectly circular. This means that the distance between it and the Sun varies over time. It takes Pluto about 250 Earth years to orbit once around the Sun, and about 6.5 Earth days to make a full rotation around its axis.

Demotion to Dwarf Planet

The IAU defines a planet as a celestial body that "orbits around the Sun, has a nearly round shape and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet because it does not meet the third criteria to be a full-sized planet. It is not the dominant object on its orbit around the Sun - other bodies can be found in the region around its neighborhood.

How to Celebrate?

Celebrate Pluto's previous status as a planet by spendings some time in the day reading about planets and their characteristics.
Have children? Take them on a visit to your local planetarium and introduce them to the joys of astronomy. Teach them everything you know about the Solar System and about planets. Maybe you could make a model of the Solar System with them in order to understand how it works?
Learn more about dwarf planets and other astronomical objects like comets, asteroids and meteor showers.

Did You Know…

…that Pluto has 5 moons: Charon, Kerberos, Nix, Hydra, and Styx?

***

My nephew, a flight attendant, split the back of his pants one day during a flight. To save embarrassment, he decided to work in front of the beverage cart, facing forward.

The arrangement worked perfectly until he got to the last row and a passenger leaned over to him and said in a low voice, "Your fly is open."

***

Security and peace of mind were part of the reason we moved to a gated community. Both flew out the window the night I called a local pizza shop for a delivery.

"I'd like to order a large pepperoni, please," I said, then gave him the address of our condominium.

"We'll be there in about half an hour," the kid at the other end replied. "Your gate code is still 1238, right?"

***

My sister Darlene has the courage—but not always the skills—to tackle any home-repair project. For example, in her garage are pieces of a lawn mower she once tried to fix. So I wasn't surprised the day my other sister, Jesse, and I found Darlene attacking her vacuum cleaner with a screwdriver.

"I can't get this thing to cooperate," she explained.

"Why don't you drag it out to the garage and show it the lawn mower?" Jesse suggested.