What reclassification would you want most in the future?

[Killer Toilet]

What would you want to IAU to reclassify most? We all remember the controversy over Pluto being a Dwarf Planet along with Eris and Ceres 3 years ago, but there was something always bothering me about something. The IAU was more concerned about planets than moons.

I would love the IAU to have this new category of "Dwarf Moons". Since Mimas is the least massive known object to have hydrostatic equilibrium. Any moon that does not have a larger mass or density as Mimas, and those without any hydrostatic equilibrium should be reclassified as a Dwarf Moon. The only exception to this would be Proteus, as I beleive it's the largest and most masive irregular sattelite to not achieve hydrostatic equilibrium, and it's the only one to have that while having a larger mass and density than Mimas.

Anyway, I think it's silly that Jupiter has 63 moons and Saturn has 61. when most of them are asteroids and meteors that are captured. I say force the IAU make the same treatment to insignificant moons and "pluto" them to Dwarf Moons.

Anyway, what classification do you want done by the IAU someday to at least organize any messes left behind?
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[RisingFury]

Thankfully, such classifications are done by people who have been educated in the field and have wroked in the field for years and not by general public.


The IAU takes votes all the time. Most of these votes are there just to synchronize vocabulary. Sometimes it turns out that two observatories discover an object, name it and it later turns out it's the same object.

The only reason the Pluto vote was so contraversial is because millions of americans associate it with Pluto, the dog.

 

[Urwumpe]

Also, people ignore that before 2006, there was not scientific solid definition of what a planet is. You had been able to call Pluto a planet and at the same time say Ceres is not, because you like Pluto, but don't care about Ceres.

 

[RisingFury]

Very true.

In 1803, Planet Ceres got discovered. Over the next 50 years, the planet count rose to 13. keep in mind, they didn't know about Pluto back then.

Turns out people were discovering asteroids in the gap between Mars and Jupiter that was not understood for a long time. In 1850's it was widelly decided that those weren't planets, but a new class of - rather small - objects.


In 1990's, with the launch of Hubble, people started discovering a new class of objects beyond Pluto that didn't fit anywhere. They were far larger then your average asteroid and they didn't behave like they do. Turns out that Pluto behaves like them. Before those objects were discovered, the word "planet" was good enought. We didn't know anything else.


It's true that it's sometimes hard to figure out what's a moon and what's a large chunk of ice around Saturn, but for now those are isolated cases. Once we start discovering planets with rings and similar, small satellites within those rings, we'll have to set a more formal definition. Thought until then, I suppose they'll just be referred to as moonlets or better yet, satellites.