UPDATE: Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars...and Pluto

Here's a link to a Publishers Weekly article I came across on Sunday. I thought I would include the following link in a Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars...and Pluto update rather than add it to the review article of Douglas Florian's newest poetry collection that I posted last Friday. I didn't want blog readers to miss Whither Pluto? by Sue Corbett (Children's Bookshelf--Publishers Weekly, 3/15/2007).

Corbett's article includes Douglas Florian's original poem about Pluto--a poem he had to rewrite when the former ninth planet in our solar system was demoted to dwarf planet last summer. It's a good thing Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto in 1930, wasn't alive when the International Astronomical Union made their momentous decision to designate just eight orbiting spheres in our solar system as "true planets." (Tombaugh passed away in 1997.)


A Word with Pluto

Well, Pluto, that's what you get for horning in on Neptune's territory. You should have known better. The big gasballs don't like it when icy little spheres intrude on their orbits. Just wait till the god you're named after and Hades, his alter ego, hear what happened to you. Thank heavens news travels slowly to the netherworld.

Some Links for Astronomy Buffs

Clyde Tombaugh (Kansas State Historical Society)

Pluto and Charon: The Discovery of a Planet

Pluto Loses Status as a Planet (From BBC News, August 24, 2006)


Pluto Poems

A Little Pluto Ditty from Gregory K. at GottaBook


PLUTO 2007
by Elaine Magliaro

Pluto, Pluto, once a planet.
Made of ice…and, maybe, granite,
A distant, tiny, frigid sphere
Demoted to a “dwarf" last year.

Pluto, Pluto, once a planet.
Astronomers said: “Let's just can it.
It’s much too small; its orbit’s odd.
It’s named after a nasty god."

Pluto, Pluto, once a planet.
The IAU chose to ban it
From the planetary club.
That's a solar systemic snub!!!