Friday, September 15, 2006

SleepyNightySnoozieSnooze

I noticed on wikipidia.org that the previously designated 2003 UB313, initially nicknamed "Xena" by its discoverers is now officially designated 136199 Eris and is the largest known “dwarf planet” in the solar system. It is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO), orbiting the Sun in a region of space known as the Kuiper Belt, and accompanied by at least one moon, Dysnomia. Mike Brown, who led the Mount Palomar-based discovery team, announced in April 2006 that the Hubble Telescope has measured Eris' diameter to be 2400 km, slightly larger than Pluto.

More info can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/136199_Eris

There are three official dwarf planets so far, Ceres, Pluto, Eris
Question is, why Eris? Since it’s a Dwarf planet why not "Bashful", "Doc", "Dopey", "Grumpy", "Happy", "Sleepy" or "Sneezy"!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home