10th planet. What, again?

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Discovered comets ususaly get the name of the discoverer. Lots of fun.

 

i never knew that! so earth IS cool, even though its infected with the plague that is human life!

 

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you forreal? lol thats insane ^^

 

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I remember seeing it. It was quite amazing, and I hope to be able to see something like that again, one day.

 

i think ive only seen one comet, and im not sure whether it was my imagination or a comet, so i still have to see my first yet.

 

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I remember Hale-Bopp... superb!!! You could see it even with lot's of street lights about, and a good tail behind it too. And also a reminder that we are very vulnerable on this planet.

 

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The main distinction between a planet and an asteroid is the shape. A planet, at its most basic definition, is an object massive enough to collapse into a spheroid (the most gravitally-stable shape) that orbits a star. An asteroid, at its most basic definition, is an object that orbits a star but does not have a strong enough gravitational field to affect its own shape.

Of course, there is a gray area, like many of the objects in the Kuiper Belt (including Pluto). It seems to me that if Pluto qualifies as a planet, this new object that is bigger than Pluto is certainly a planet. But they both seem more like very large asteroids to me.

And yes, the nomenclature is a bit silly. When the terms were first coined, there were really only three types of celestial bodies that people knew about: stars, planets, and satellites. It seems reasonable to abandon these terms (or at least redefine them) now that we know how diverse the objects in the universe are.