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The Subplanetary Family

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Classifying the Cosmos

Part of the book series: Astronomers' Universe ((ASTRONOM))

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Abstract

With the class of “dwarf planet,” we come face-to-face with the heated public and scientific controversy that followed the 2006 decision by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to “demote” Pluto and create this new class of objects. It was one of the most notorious decisions in the history of the IAU and in astronomical classification. The decision might not have been so controversial if a dwarf planet were ruled to be a type of planet; however, it was ruled instead to be a subplanetary object. We classify it here following those decisions.

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Notes

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    William G. Hoyt, Planets X and Pluto (University of Arizona Press, 1980); Tombaugh’s own account is Clyde Tombaugh and Patrick Moore, Out of the Darkness: The Planet Pluto (New American Library: New York, 1980).

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    Govert Schilling, The Hunt for Planet X: New Worlds and the Fate of Pluto (New York: Copernicus Books, 2009).

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    Alan Stern and David Grinspoon, Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto (New York, Picador, 2018), pp. 170–174.

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    Michael Brown, How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming (2010); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dwarf_planet_candidates

  7. 7.

    Alan Stern and David Grinspoon, Chasing New Horizons, especially pp. 275 ff.

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    Virgil, Georgics, Book I, lines 365–367; Judith Kingston Bjorkman, “Meteors and Meteorites in the Ancient Near East,” Meteoritics, 8, no. 2 p. 91, online at ADS.

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    Mark Littmann, The Heavens on Fire: The Great Leonid Meteor Storms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 35. Dick (2013), 208–211.

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    D. Olmsted, “Observations on the meteors of 13 Nov. 1833,” AJSA, 25 (1834), 363–411 and AJSA, 26 (1834), 132–174; Steven J. Dick, “Observation and interpretation of the Leonid meteors over the last millennium,” JAHH, 1, (1998), 1–20.

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    H. A. Newton, “Evidence of the cosmical origin of shooting stars derived from the dates of early star-showers,” AJSA, 36 (1863), 145–149; Dick (2013), pp. 208–211.

  12. 12.

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  13. 13.

    Greg Laughlin, “Oumuamua’s Dramatic Visit,” S&T, 136 (October, 2018), 20–26. Avi Loeb, the chairman of the Harvard Astronomy Department, has seriously argued the alien hypothesis at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.11490.pdf

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    Giuseppe Piazzi, “Results of the Observations of the New Star,” Palermo Observatory, 1801; English translation excerpts reprinted in Bartusiak, 151–152.

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    Eric G. Forbes, “Gauss and the Discovery of Ceres,” JHA, 2 (1971), 195–199. For more details of the discovery of asteroids see Dick (2013), pp. 45–49.

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    William Herschel, “Observations on the two lately discovered celestial bodies,” PTRSL, 92 (1802), 213–232. See also David W. Hughes and Brian G. Marsden, “Planet, Asteroid, Minor Planet: A Case Study in Astronomical Nomenclature,” JAHH, 10 (March, 2007), 21–30.

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    James Hilton, “When did the Asteroids become Minor Planets?”, http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/minorplanets.php; David W. Hughes, “Planet, Asteroid, Minor Planet: A Case Study in Astronomical Nomenclature,” JAHH, 10 (2007), 21–30; Dick (2013), p. 49.

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    C. R. Chapman, D. Morrison and B. Zellner, “Surface properties of asteroids – A synthesis of polarimetry, radiometry, and spectrophotometry,” Icarus, 25 (1975), 104 ff.

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    D. J. Tholen, “Asteroid taxonomic classifications,” Asteroids II; Proceedings of the Conference. University of Arizona Press (1989), pp. 1139–1150; S. J. Bus, “Phase II of the Small Main-belt Asteroid Spectroscopy Survey: A feature-based taxonomy,” Icarus, 158 (2002): 146. F.E DeMeo and B. Carry, “The taxonomic distribution of asteroids from multi-filter all-sky photometric surveys,” Icarus, 226 (2013), 723–741, https://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.2424.pdf

  20. 20.

    On Hayabusa and Osiris-Rex see Dan Durda, “Space Rock Rendezvous,” S&T, 135 (June, 2018), 22–28.

  21. 21.

    Fred L. Whipple, “A Comet Model I. The Acceleration of Comet Encke,” ApJ, 111 (1950), 375–394, reprinted in part in Bartusiak, 445–448. Dick (2013), pp. 202–206.

  22. 22.

    Jan H. Oort, “The structure of the cloud of comets surrounding the solar system and a hypothesis concerning its origin,” BAIN, 11 (1950), 91–110, reprinted in part in Bartusiak, 441–445.

  23. 23.

    A catalog of naked-eye comets reported through 1700 AD is found in Yeomans, Comets, pp. 361–424. On comets and culture see Sara J. Schechner, Comets, Popular Culture, and the Birth of Modern Cosmology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

  24. 24.

    John T. Ramsay and A. Lewis Licht, The Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar’s Funeral Games (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997).

  25. 25.

    Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), p. 600.

  26. 26.

    Janaki Wickramasinghe, Chandra Wickramasinghe and William Napier, Comets and the Origin of Life (Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific, 2010). This volume is the latest in a series of books and articles making this claim, dating to the 1970s, and involving astronomer Fred Hoyle.

  27. 27.

    M. Barucci et al., “The Solar System Beyond Neptune: Overview and Perspectives,” in M. A. Barucci et al., eds., The Solar System Beyond Neptune, (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008), pp. 3–10.

  28. 28.

    John K. Davies et al., “The Early Development of Ideas Concerning the Transneptunian Region,” in M. A. Barucci et al., eds. (2008), pp. 11–23. K. E. Edgeworth, “The Evolution of our Planetary System,” JBAS, 53, (1943), 181–188: 186; Edgeworth, “The origin and evolution of the solar system,” MNRAS, 109 (1949), 600–609; and Gerard Kuiper, “On the origin of the solar system,” in Astrophysics: A Topical Symposium, J. A. Hynek, ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co. 1951), pp. 357–424:402.

  29. 29.

    F. Whipple, “Evidence for a comet belt beyond Neptune, PNAS, 51 (1964), 711–718; J. Fernandez, “On the existence of a comet belt beyond Neptune,” MNRAS, 192 (1980), 481–491.

    M. Duncan et al., “The origin of short-period comets,” ApJ, 328 (1988), L69–L73. On the nomenclature controversy see http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/icq/kb.html; (Dick, 2013), pp. 57–62.

  30. 30.

    H. E. Schlichting et al., “A single sub-kilometre Kuiper belt object from a stellar occultation in archival data,” Nature, 462 (2009), 895; HST Release, “Hubble Finds Smallest Kuiper Belt Object Ever Seen,” December 16, 2009, http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/33/

  31. 31.

    Michael E. Brown, Chadwick Trujillo and David Rabinowitz, “Discovery of a Candidate Inner Oort Cloud Planetoid,” ApJ, 617 (2004), 645–649; http://www.gps.caltech.edu/%7Embrown/papers/ps/sedna.pdf. Dick (2013), pp. 57–62.

  32. 32.

    M. Fulchignoni et al., “Transneptunian Object Taxonomy,” in M. A. Barucci et al., eds., The Solar System Beyond Neptune, (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008), pp. 181–192.

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  1. Ashburn, VA, USA

    Steven J. Dick

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Dick, S.J. (2019). The Subplanetary Family. In: Classifying the Cosmos. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10380-4_4

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