Geek & Space 03 Oct 2005 10:54 am
Of planets and moons
Interesting developments in the outer solar system: it turns out that 2003 UB313, the possible 10th planet (code-name “Xena”), has a moon. That body, which I discussed in a previous post, is larger than Pluto and orbits the Sun in such a way as to intersect Pluto’s orbit, which makes it the most similar body to other planets that was discovered so far.
The moon doesn’t have a name yet (it was discovered less than a month ago, on 10 September) and is officially known only as “S/2005 (2003 UB313)”. The discoverers are calling it “Gabrielle”, though (understandably). Its discovery is very important because it will help astronomers to find out how massive “Xena” is by studying the way the moon orbits the main body.
Oddly enough, the discovery of a moon around it doesn’t mean that “Xena” has any more hope of being called a planet than it had before. Many other bodies in the solar system have moons around then, including several small asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter.
on 02 Feb 2006 at 1:06 pm 1.Random Developments » Looking at Pluto said …
[...] Interesting developments… it looks like 2003 UB313, about which I wrote here and here, is smaller than it was thought. It is so reflective that it looks larger than it is, and this means that it may not be larger than Pluto after all (update: it turns out that it is, indeed, 30% larger than Pluto). Not that this changes much about the discussion of whether it is a planet or not, and the same goes for Pluto. [...]