What is a planet?

By Michael on August 21, 2008 at 3:01 am | In Blog Posts |

Emily sums it up perfectly:

The longer I listened to the “great planet debate” last week, the more strongly I felt that if it were up to me, I would define “planet” to mean “everything in the universe that’s smaller than a star.” The fact of the matter is, every time I speak about any object visited by a spacecraft, I make frequent slips of the tongue. I call Titan a planet. I call Enceladus a planet. I’ve even called Tempel 1 a planet. They’re all wanderers, all places to visit. Subdivide it however you like — it makes sense to speak of giant (or Jovian) planets, ice giant planets, major planets, terrestrial planets, minor planets, dwarf planets, binary planets, whatever. But just look around at the people who call themselves “planetary scientists” and see what they study. It’s all of the above.

Then she goes on to show the relative sizes of some interesting “planets” in the solar system, using her interesting definition. Definitely worth a read.