A rumination on Pluto

      It’s all too rude. Poor Pluto was hanging out in the Solar system minding his own business doing his same old weirdly axis-ed orbit he’s always done; when some nosy astronomers discovered Pluto’s Moon Charon, and by measuring Charon’s orbit concluded Pluto was much smaller than they’d thought.  When it comes to planets size DOES matter and it was downhill from there.  Nosy astronomers started treating him like an asteroid on steroids.   Then in 2006 International Astronomical Union (The world’s largest collection of Professional nosy astronomers who get to decide these things) using Pluto’s “low” mass and other standards including his own freaky orbit voted to de-planetize Pluto.   First they called him a “dwarf Planet”  then, I guess to mollify the rest of the solar system, who must be pissed to see their brother so put down, have decided he’s  “an important proto-type of a new class of trans-Neptunian objects”  They are calling these objects "Plutoids." (Which doesn't sound at all nice; and rather like a hemorrhoid treatment)

  So, he’s a  Plutoid, which is a dwarf planet. (Kind of a planet-lite, but he’s still been tossed out of our Solar System’s pantheon of full blooded,  Big-massed  planets)  So our home star Sol, is down to 8 planetary bodies dancing about her sphere.   Frankly, since Voyager 2 did its fly-by the IAU has been looking at her 7^th planet with a jaundiced eye.  If they ever get a probe out there our solar system may be knocked down to just 7 planets ending with Neptune.       
  
  So Sol, you better watch Uranus!