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Is it time to have a Pluto moment for moons? In the end, all such labels are arbitrary, but an calling an object of 2 or 3 km radius a moon feels wrong to me, s
by krylon 8y ago
Is it time to have a Pluto moment for moons? In the end, all such labels are arbitrary, but an calling an object of 2 or 3 km radius a moon feels wrong to me, somehow.
Plus, without a lower boundary, pretty much every single chunk of ice in Saturn's rings would count as a moon, so having a formalized definition might come in handy. ;-)
- autokad 8y agowell, I certainly think pluto is more of a planet than these are moons
- dmoy 8y agoI think they mean to make a formal definition of moon that would exclude some of the new Jupiter moons, similar to the new formal definition of planet excluding Pluto from being a planet.
- Brockenstein 8y agoI got it! Dwarf moons.
- bargl 8y agoThere is a movement to make anything that isn't a sun capable of being a planet based on only it's own physical characteristics not that of it's location in space. https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-scientists-have-proposed-a-new-definition-for-planets-and-it-could-change-everything https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-scientists-have-proposed-a...
- Symmetry 8y agoThere really isn't any equivalent of the asteroid/planet split that exists for non-moons. We've known about small, non-spherical moons for over a century and nobody has seriously advocated giving a different name for them and the big spherical ones: Luna, Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, Io, Titan, and Triton. But yeah, astronomers will certianly need to figure out some distinction between chunks of ring and discrete moons.