America Ignores Pluto Day Recognition March 13^th

There is still time to throw away the old crusty con­ven­tion one more time and be con­tro­ver­sial — just like the once Planet Pluto was de-​moted by The Inter­na­tional Astro­nom­i­cal Union (IAU), on August 26 2006 from world rec­og­nized Planet sta­tus to NOT even a mere star, but a dwarf planet — yes a dwarf.

But dwarf planet Pluto is mak­ing a con­tro­ver­sial come back. Dwarf Planet or not, a Pluto renais­sance is tak­ing place in Illi­nois (maybe the entire nation), even dur­ing these dif­fi­cult times. At last some relief — even for a day would give the ol’ psy­chic some recharge time. Good god it has been tough lately!

Full Plan­e­tary Sta­tus
The state of Illi­nois plans on March 13, 2009, to rein­state Pluto back to a full, mature and glo­ri­ous planet again. All things aside, this is the same state that elects gov­er­nors and then impeaches them more than any­one else. See Illi­nois Sen­ate Res­o­lu­tion 46

March 13^th des­ig­nated as “Pluto Day“
March 13^th could be an enchanted day world­wide — imag­ine that? It is only two days before the Ides of March which either is a fes­tive cel­e­bra­tion, or the remem­brance of Julius Caesar’s assas­si­na­tion, depend­ing on your perspective.

It was Feb­ru­ary 18, 1930, when 24 year-​old Clyde Tombaugh noticed a blink­ing point that became known as Pluto the planet — not the goofy Walt Dis­ney car­toon char­ac­ter dog. See Pluto’s wikipedia cita­tion here.

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NOT

The vote that shook up the entire solar sys­tem… is it hap­pen­ing again?
“Pluto is dead,” said Cal­tech researcher Mike Brown, who spoke with reporters via a tele­con­fer­ence while mon­i­tor­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Planet demo­tion vote by 424 astronomers (out of some 10,000 pro­fes­sional astronomers around the globe), at their meet­ing in Prague — and after eight days of con­tentious debate that involved four sep­a­rate pro­pos­als. That deci­sion also means a Pluto-​sized object that Brown dis­cov­ered will not be called a planet. Astronomers world­wide wran­gled over Pluto since the late 1990s — to demote Pluto or NOT !

“Pluto is not a planet,” Brown said. “There are finally, offi­cially, eight plan­ets in the solar sys­tem.”

That ambigu­ous deci­sion estab­lished three main cat­e­gories of objects in our solar system.

• Plan­ets: The eight worlds from Mer­cury to Nep­tune.
• Dwarf Plan­ets: Pluto and any other round object that “has not cleared the neigh­bor­hood around its orbit, and is not a satellite.”
• Small Solar Sys­tem Bod­ies: All other objects orbit­ing the Sun

Illi­nois plu­tonic procla­ma­tion by Gov­er­nor Rod Blago­je­vich: “WHEREAS, Dr. Tombaugh is so far the only Illi­noisan and only Amer­i­can to ever dis­cover a planet…“ok this is incor­rect, but the effort was put forth ?

Con­fus­ing and Unfor­tu­nate
That pro­posed def­i­n­i­tion — dwarf planet, has been lam­basted as “con­fus­ing and unfor­tu­nate” by Owen Gin­gerich, his­to­rian and astronomer emer­i­tus at Har­vard who led the commit­tee in decid­ing Pluto’s fate.