I think it was informally named Xena (yup, after the warrior princess). It's the discovery which made the is-it-or-isn't-it-a-planet debate so timely: Xena is larger than Pluto but is definitely in KB space, so either we have to expand our informal definition of planets to include all KBOs, or we downgrade Pluto from planet to large, inner KBO.
There's going to be a lot more discoveries like Xena, Sedna & Quaor in the next few years so we'll either have a much larger sample space on which to base a decision, or we'll have a lot more rewriting of our astronomy texts.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-09 06:49 pm (UTC)It's the discovery which made the is-it-or-isn't-it-a-planet debate so timely: Xena is larger than Pluto but is definitely in KB space, so either we have to expand our informal definition of planets to include all KBOs, or we downgrade Pluto from planet to large, inner KBO.
There's going to be a lot more discoveries like Xena, Sedna & Quaor in the next few years so we'll either have a much larger sample space on which to base a decision, or we'll have a lot more rewriting of our astronomy texts.