May 2014 FAS Meeting

What is a Dwarf Planet, how many are there and what did happen to poor Pluto?

For hundreds of years we’ve looked up at the night sky and observed “stars” that appear to wander through the sky. We came to know these stars as the planets. Up until the latter part of the 18th century, there were six planets. In 1791, Uranus was discovered followed by Neptune in 1846. Then in 1930, this small distance object named Pluto was found. Everything seemed okay for a number of years – we had the nine planets that most of us have grown up with. However, in the last decade of the 20th century everything started to change. Finally, in 2006 the International Astronomical Union “demoted” Pluto from the category of planets and created a new category of objects called “Dwarf Planets”. What happened? What is a Dwarf Planet, how many are there and what did happen to poor Pluto?

Find out by joining us at the May 27 meeting of the Forsyth Astronomical Society (7:30 @ SciWorks) for a talk on Dwarf Planets.