How many planets are now in the solar system and what are thier names?
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Actually, are you aware that only a few months ago, there was an important meeting where they defined the word "planet" and decided which bodies counted?
Until this summer, "planet" only meant "wanderer" and referred to the "stars" in the sky that followed a strange path.
Around the 17 or 1800's, the asteroid Ceres was discovered and declared a planet. It lost its status when other asteroids were discovered and they realized it was just a large member of a whole bunch of rocks.
The IAU's proposal, which would have allowed for 12 planets immediately and up to 53 or so more upon further investigation, would define a planet as:
- not being a moon to something else
- having so much mass that it forms itself into a sphere
( http://www.iau.org/iau0601_resolution.43... )
Had this proposal been passed, the planets would currently be as follows:
Mercury Venus Earth Mars Ceres Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto Charon Xena
However, the scientists ultimately decided on adding a clause along the lines of,
"has cleared the area around its orbit."
( http://www.iau.org/iau0602.423.0.html... )
Which resulted in Pluto losing its planetary status.
So, we currently have 8 planets.
You can buy a T-shirt about it here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/science...
there's 8.
not pluto.
They took out pluto do what now.... How could they
mercury,venus,earth,mars,jupit... planet),pluto(dwarf planet),cres(dwarf planet)
there are 8 planets... the rest are dwarf planets, asteroids, etc
There are two classes of planets in the Solar System. The first class is defined as "planets" by the recent IAU resolution. These are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.
The second class is "dwarf planets" also defined by the recent IAU resolution. Currently, Eris, Ceres, Pluto and Charon are members of this class. I'm adding Charon as it is likely that the Pluto/Charon system will be defined as a double-planet system as their common center of gravity is between the two bodies.
There will likely be more members of the "dwarf planet" class as better measurements are made of the Kuiper Belt and Scattered Disk objects. Again, IMHO all twelve are planets, they just fall into two categories.
8, mercury, venus, earth, mars, jupiter, saturn, uranus& neptune.
pluto was ejected from this group coz its too small & its orbit clashed with that of uranus
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