From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Oct 07 2002 - 09:01:21 MDT
> Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 02:28:30 -0700
> From: Bruce Moomaw <moomaw@cwnet.com>
> Reply-To: europa@klx.com
> To: planetary_sciences@yahoogroups.com
> Cc: Jupiter List <jupiter_list@yahoogroups.com>,
> Europa Icepick <europa@klx.com>, Simon Mansfield <simon@spacer.com>
> Subject: The biggest rival for Pluto yet!
>
>
> >From this morning's "Space News Briefs":
>
> Caltech Scientists Discover Object Half As Large As Pluto
>
> Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have discovered a
> Kuiper belt object half the size of Pluto, a finding expected to raise
> further questions about Pluto's status as a planet.
>
> The spherical object, dubbed Quaoar by the scientists who first spotted it
> in a digital sky image taken June 4 with a 1.2-meter telescope at Palomar
> Observatory, is the largest object to be discovered in the solar system
> since Pluto's discovery in 1930.
>
> "Quaoar definitely hurts the case for Pluto being a planet," said Mike
> Brown, a Caltech associate professor who, along with post doctoral
> researcher Chad Trujillo, made the discovery. "If Pluto were discovered
> today, no one would even consider calling it a planet because it's clearly a
> Kuiper belt object."
>
> Quaoar (pronounced KWAH-o-ar) is named after the creation force of the
> Tongva tribe that originally inhabited the Los Angeles basin where Caltech
> is located.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:26 MST