Sunday, March 25, 2007

Pluto is not a Planet in 2 minutes


There was a great story in the March 15 issue of PW about Doug Florian's new book of poetry coming out in April Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars. Seems that when the International Astronomical Union declassified Pluto as a planet last August and reclassified it as a dwarf planet, Mr. Florian had to do a fast edit to several of the entries in his new book. I wonder why he labeled the non-planet Charon?

1 comment:

Douglas Florian said...

Pluto's rotation period is 6.387 days,the same as its satellite Charon. Although it is common for a satellite to travel in a synchronous orbit with its planet, Pluto is the only planet to rotate synchronously with the orbit of its satellite. Thus being tidally locked,Pluto and Charon always face each other traveling through space.
Your pluto-nic friend Douglas Florian