David Player May 25, 2007
----- Original Message -----
From: David Player
To: guide-user@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 9:17 PM
Subject: Re: [guide-user] Pluto's status
I like your rationale Bill.
In fact, I still don't understand what all the fuss was about anyway. When the IAU identifies Pluto it is still called "planet" but with the adjective "minor" preceeding (in English). The point is, it is not a star, not a planetoid, not a comet, etc, etc, etc, but is a planet.
There are rocky planets, gas giants, minor planets
Such a fuss about so little.
david
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill J Gray
To: guide-user@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2007 8:27 PM
Subject: Re: [guide-user] Pluto's status
Hi Wolfgang,
Odd you should mention this... at the time of the "what's
a planet" controversy, I got a lot of questions from those
who know what I do about my opinion in the matter. I replied
that at first, I was totally uninterested. It seemed to me
to be a question similar to "what's the difference between a
rock and a boulder."
Eventually, it occurred to me that revising the definition
of a planet could lead to a Y2K-like problem for me, resulting
in all sorts of revision in assorted places in the code. That
caused me to suddenly champion the "cultural" definition of a
planet: there are nine planets, we all grew up knowing this,
so it's silly for the IAU to impose some equally arbitrary
definition. Of course, the "cultural" definition would make
things easy for programmers: the list of planets would remain
the same, and we wouldn't have to change anything in our
software. Unfortunately, the IAU didn't see things that way.
For the moment, at least, I'm sticking to the "cultural"
definition. I don't think having Pluto appear in the list of
planets in "more info", or having its display controlled as
if it were a planet, will confuse anyone very much.
If anyone can present reasons for changing Guide's definition
of a "planet", I'm willing to listen. But at present, I don't
have a good reason to change it... I've been working on other
problems, instead. (Including this satellite pass problem.
Thanks to all for the comments on what you're seeing. I am,
at present, baffled. I will reply further once I do a bit
more investigating.)
-- Bill
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]