Pluto

Eris, the dwarf planet whose 2005 discovery led to Pluto losing its status as a planet, has passed in front of a star, providing astronomers with the clearest view of it since it was identified. It is about the same size as Pluto and is one of the brightest objects in the solar system, according to the new analysis, released Wednesday by the journal Nature. Scientists' picture of Eris had remained fuzzy because its distance from Earth is so vast: It is about three times farther out from the sun than Pluto.

Eris, the dwarf planet whose 2005 discovery led to Pluto losing its status as a planet, has passed in front of a star, providing astronomers with the clearest view of it since it was identified. It is about the same size as Pluto and is one of the brightest objects in the solar system, according to the new analysis, released Wednesday by the journal Nature. Scientists' picture of Eris had remained fuzzy because its distance from Earth is so vast: It is about three times farther out from the sun than Pluto.

Re "Pluto Learns Eight Is Enough for Planets," Aug. 25 Think size doesn't matter? Talk to Pluto. GENE OLSON Carlsbad

James Elliot, the MIT astronomer who discovered the rings of Uranus and the faint atmosphere of Pluto, died March 3 at his home in Wellesley, Mass. He was 67 and had been suffering from cancer. The rings of Uranus are narrow and faint and not observable from Earth. Pluto not only is small, but it is on the outer fringes of the solar system, making it equally difficult to view its atmosphere directly. Elliot relied on an indirect technique called stellar occultation, in which astronomers watch a planet or other astronomical object very carefully as it passes in front of a star.

Newly computer-processed images of Pluto taken by the Hubble Space Telescope show that it is not simply a ball of ice and rock, but a dynamic world that undergoes dramatic atmospheric changes produced by its seasons, NASA said Thursday. The images show an icy and dark molasses-colored world that is highly mottled and whose northern hemisphere is now getting brighter. The images show that the body -- once considered the ninth and most distant planet but now reduced to the status of dwarf planet -- also turned noticeably redder in the two years after the turn of the millennium for reasons that are not clear, and that its equator features a large bright spot whose origin remains a mystery.

Little Pluto just keeps on surprising astronomers. Now moving away from the sun during its 248-year-long orbit, Pluto's atmosphere should be contracting and possibly disappearing. But an observation in August showed that the mostly nitrogen atmosphere has grown, and the temperature of the planet, some 400 degrees below zero, has increased by more than 1 degree.

How I Killed Pluto And Why It Had It Coming Mike Brown Spiegel & Grau: 267 pp., $25 Moon A Brief History Bernd Brunner Yale University Press: 290 pp., $25 Pluto. Poor little guy. He never wanted much. The others could be bigger, they could be better-looking or brag about themselves ("I'm burning hot!" or "I have rings!" or "I support life!"). He didn't care. All he wanted was to be part of the planet club. And for about 75 years, that tiny frozen world billions of miles from the sun was a card-carrying member.

The Senate Appropriations Committee has budgeted $25 million for NASA to begin work on a Pluto mission, but the new funding still would need to be approved later this fall by members of the House and the president. Previous plans for a $700-million Pluto mission were scrapped by the space agency in September. Two teams, including one from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, are now competing to put together a $500-million mission.

Like the Edsel, the Flying Wing, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the ninth planet became a relic of history Thursday when international astronomers meeting in the Czech Republic decided Pluto was too small to remain a full member of the planetary club. Members of the International Astronomical Union overwhelmingly voted to demote Pluto to a "dwarf planet." Though still retaining the term planet, it was clear that Pluto had been exiled. "Pluto's out," said Michael E.

Congress has kept plans for a Pluto mission alive--for at least one more year. A House-Senate conference committee has approved $30 million for NASA to continue developing a mission to reach the outermost planet. * Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II

How I Killed Pluto And Why It Had It Coming Mike Brown Spiegel & Grau: 267 pp., $25 Moon A Brief History Bernd Brunner Yale University Press: 290 pp., $25 Pluto. Poor little guy. He never wanted much. The others could be bigger, they could be better-looking or brag about themselves ("I'm burning hot!" or "I have rings!" or "I support life!"). He didn't care. All he wanted was to be part of the planet club. And for about 75 years, that tiny frozen world billions of miles from the sun was a card-carrying member.

Look, Pluto had a good run. While 76 years is nothing in astronomical time, in the human span it's a whole lifetime. For all those decades, Pluto was regarded as a planet, the smallest and most distant member of our solar system family. It had an affectionate place in human hearts, and a Disney cartoon character and an element as famous namesakes. And then, Mike Brown killed it. He admits as much; it's the title of his book, "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. " In 2005, the Caltech astronomer found, in the same neighborhood as Pluto, an object at least as big as Pluto, which he called Eris.

Astronomer Brian G. Marsden, a comet and asteroid tracker who stood sentinel to protect the Earth from collisions with interplanetary rocks and other remnants of the solar system's creation, died Thursday of cancer at Lahey Clinic Medical Center in Burlington, Mass. He was 73. Director emeritus of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., Marsden was perhaps best known for his 1998 announcement that an asteroid known as 1997 XF11 might strike the Earth in 2028, causing untold damage.

Irish playwright Conor McPherson's agreeably melancholy, spooky and romantic "The Eclipse" -- his third film as writer-director -- gets the most out of assorted hauntings. There's the case of widowed woodworker Michael (Ciarán Hinds), a glum sort with two kids who not only mourns for his wife but begins to see terrifying visions of his still-alive (but in failing health) father. At his seaside town's annual literary festival, he volunteers as a driver for a beautiful horror novelist named Lena (Iben Hjejle)

Newly computer-processed images of Pluto taken by the Hubble Space Telescope show that it is not simply a ball of ice and rock, but a dynamic world that undergoes dramatic atmospheric changes produced by its seasons, NASA said Thursday. The images show an icy and dark molasses-colored world that is highly mottled and whose northern hemisphere is now getting brighter. The images show that the body -- once considered the ninth and most distant planet but now reduced to the status of dwarf planet -- also turned noticeably redder in the two years after the turn of the millennium for reasons that are not clear, and that its equator features a large bright spot whose origin remains a mystery.

Far beyond the moon and stars, Twenty light-years south of Mars, Spins the gentle Bunny Planet, And the Bunny Queen is Janet. -- Voyage to the Bunny Planet by Rosemary Wells Kids love the Bunny Planet books by Rosemary Wells. Maybe you failed a test, or ate a bad hot dog, or got in trouble for making rude noises on the school bus. No problem! Janet the Bunny Queen will make you feel better. If only the Bunny Planet were real -- it almost was. A few years ago, astronomer Mike Brown of Caltech discovered a small planet.

James Elliot, the MIT astronomer who discovered the rings of Uranus and the faint atmosphere of Pluto, died March 3 at his home in Wellesley, Mass. He was 67 and had been suffering from cancer. The rings of Uranus are narrow and faint and not observable from Earth. Pluto not only is small, but it is on the outer fringes of the solar system, making it equally difficult to view its atmosphere directly. Elliot relied on an indirect technique called stellar occultation, in which astronomers watch a planet or other astronomical object very carefully as it passes in front of a star.

Pluto's two newly discovered moons have been named Nix and Hydra, scientists said Thursday. The official designations for the second and third moons around the distant planet were approved by the International Astronomical Union. Nix and Hydra were discovered in May 2005 by a team of researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope. Nix gets its name from Nyx, the Greek goddess of darkness and night.

"Science has become much less cool," journalist Chris Mooney writes in "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future" (July 2009, Basic Books). Mooney, author of the 2005 bestseller "The Republican War on Science," and his coauthor, Sheril Kirshenbaum, a marine scientist at Duke University, seek to explain how Americans have come to minimize science when, they say, we need it most -- as global warming, advances in genetics and the possibility of climate engineering lie in our future.

Venetia Phair, who was 11 years old when she suggested Pluto as the name of the newly discovered planet, has died in England. She was 90. She died at home in Epsom, south of London, on April 30, her family said. The cause of death was not disclosed. Phair suggested the name to her grandfather at breakfast in 1930. "My grandfather, as usual, opened the paper, The Times, and in it he read that a new planet had been discovered. He wondered what it should be called.