We Are The Normal

I don't know how many people are enthusiastic about the New Horizons mission, which is supposed to arrive at Pluto in about nine years to begin exploring the Kuiper belt, where Pluto resides. Of the nine major planets (and scientists differ strongly whether Pluto should be considered a planet or not, though I firmly support its status), Pluto is the only one that has not been explored yet.

Pluto is a quirky little planet, which would largely explain why it is my favorite of the planets. I mean, it doesn't really fit in but it tries really hard anyway (it occasionally can be found closer to the sun than Neptune, has 3 moons, has an atmosphere of Methane, and has a somewhat askew orbit of the sun). It is sad when one can identify with a really cold rock covered in N2 and CH4 (and trace amounts of CO2), but so be it. In fact, I have been a fan of Pluto's for a long time, since I was a small child. Once, our pastor in Worldwide in Lakeland, FL (a man by the name of Guy Ames), gave a sermon about planets in the Kingdom of God. I responded to him (as I am wont to do) that Pluto was my favorite planet, and I gave the reasons why. Even as a very small one I was attracted to what was neglected, obscure, and disputed. Some things never change.

Pluto itself was only discovered in 1930 by a young research assistant named Clyde Tombaugh. He was only 24 at the age he discovered Pluto, and he had been hired by Dr. Vesto Slipher, the director of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Observatory (in Arizona). The observatory was named after Percival Lowell, who funded the observatory (and named it after himself, duh) and speculated on the existence of a supposed "Planet X" that had caused certain shifts that forced Neptune to deviate from its theoretical orbit. Similar calculations had been used to discover Uranus and Neptune. Pluto, of course, was far too small to be responsible for the deviations in Neptune's orbit, and the discovery of Pluto is considered to be serindipitous (or, in other words, lucky). In 1975, a moon was discovered for Pluto and was named Charon. Charon was found to be half the mass of Pluto.

Ever since then, there has been a great deal of skepticism about the status of Pluto. While some of us (fans of the underdog, if you will) consistently defend the planetary status of Pluto, others have long considered Pluto a planetary freak. It turns out, though, that Pluto was merely the first of many similar objects in the Kuiper Belt. There are a great deal of small, very very cold, binary objects (a planetoid with a relatively large moon orbiting each other closely) as well as comets in the area beyond Neptune. Therefore, many astronomers consider the solar system to consist of three zones: the rocky inner planetary region, which ends at the asteroid belt, the gas giant region, between Jupiter and Neptune, and the frigid Kuiper belt region of small and eccentric planetary objects extending from Pluto the points far beyond.

So, if you (like me) are a fan of the obscure and underdog planet of Pluto, here is hoping that the New Horizons project ends up uncovering more information about that most misfit of planets. While astronomers continue (thus far unsuccessfully) to seek after a large Planet X, the rest of us can rejoice in a small planet that continues to fight agianst the odds and the naysayers. Here's to Pluto, which turns out to be a lot more normal than most astronomers ever figured it to be until very recently.