COUNT TO TEN! Let me be the first to ask if you know how many planets we now have in our solar system? Have you been keeping track of such matters, have you been more concerned with keeping the one we do have in our care intact?
There are ten planets at the moment. That's one more than we have been claiming.
This situation came about because of the work of Dr. Mike Brown, at Cal Tech and his associates looking through the Palomar Observatory telescope located near San Diego, CA. along with Chad Trujillo at the Gemini Observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii and David Rabinowitz, at Yale University, New Haven, CT. Mike Brown took three fine photographs of the object on October 21, 2003, using the famous Samuel Oschin scope at Palomar. He did the three exposures of the object at ninety minute intervals and typical planetary movements and other traits to be properly recorded and identified - then checked and re-checked by other members of the discovering group. That sort of work cannot be hurried and it must be meticulously precise in every phase. Brown says "we are one hundred per confident that this is the first object bigger than Pluto ever found in outer solar system." The telescopic studies have not, as yet, revealed the precise dimensions of the plane but it has been shown that all planets, shining by reflected light as they do, can be measured by the amount of light they reflect light. The larger the object the more light would be reflected and with such known facts in mind the present group has decided the new planet is a big larger than Pluto. If Pluto, our Number Nine planet, measures 1400 miles across , then the new planet will prove to be about one and half times larger...possible two thousand miles across.
None of this can, as yet, be called "official". It must be presented before the International Astronomical Union, received and approved. There a individuals who claim the work of this group has been flawed from the start. If the "Plant Number Ten" tag doesn't suit your fancy call it by its unofficial, temporary name which is: 2003UB313.
A.L.M. July 30, 2004 [c402wds]
