09 April 2007

Relative sizes of 88 largest objects in the solar system

Found this by way of Cosmic Variance: it's a figure of the 88 largest objects in the solar system. I know I've come down on the Pluto issue before: I argued for the anti-Pluto view that the IAU eventually adopted (it's so rare for me to actually be on the winning side of anything). This picture shows were Pluto and other large but not large objects fall. I still stand by my original view, but this picture does show that coming up with a hard cutoff point is very, very difficult at best; it's almost a smooth gradation of diameters from Earth downward, though between Mars and Eris, Pluto, etc are quite a few large moons.

At the very least, it's a pretty picture.

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3 Comments:

At April 09, 2007 6:14 p.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

That is beautiful...and awesome.

I say keep it simple: cut anything off that's smaller than Earth, by god. And gas giants don't count as real planet either. That's right...if it ain't the earth then it's no better than a moon or a bag of gas -- and I don't care if the damn things wander about! Greek is a dead language and they thought they were all stars anyway. Fools.

Who's going to argue with us? Scientist? Hah, they're just going on faith too, and godless faith no less.

That, KA, is how you guarantee that you'll be right every time.

 
At April 10, 2007 10:36 a.m., Blogger King Aardvark said...

By golly, I'm convinced. You've shown me the light. Hallelujah!

;-)

 
At April 11, 2007 3:59 p.m., Blogger Bjorn Watland said...

Thanks for the post, silly Pluto.

 

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