Printable Version of Topic

Posted by: elakdawalla Jan 28 2008, 06:12 PM

I don't suppose anyone has an old cached version of the Photojournal home page graphic lying around anywhere, do you? I noticed when I checked Photojournal's new images today that among the new images is this one:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10231

It contains eight planets only, no sign of Pluto -- I assume the graphic that this one replaced did contain it, but of course I don't have a copy anymore.

Just for grins, I tried to hunt down images of Pluto using the menus and links now available on the Photojournal home page and I couldn't do it. Pluto is not available from the dropdown in Small Bodies searches, nor is it available from the dropdown in the Universe category (even though 2003 UB313 is). Google turns up what was once the index page available through the link on the home page graphic (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Pluto). Someone needs to figure out how to help people find Pluto pictures!

--Emily

Posted by: centsworth_II Jan 28 2008, 06:23 PM

Venus looks very colorful -- with features!
Did they try to picture it's surface without the cloud cover? Interesting choice,
to include clouds on Earth, and eliminate them from Venus.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jan 28 2008, 06:42 PM

I found it using the Wayback Machine. The image doesn't appear on the older pages, but by checking the properties you can find the http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/images/level1-photojournal_new.jpgwhich still resides on their server.

Here are the two images side by side. Might be fun to align them and make one of your trademark animated gifs (good work spotting this!)

Posted by: Stan Farley Jan 28 2008, 06:46 PM

Previous picture is also currently available at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06890

Posted by: TheChemist Jan 28 2008, 07:34 PM

Wait until Alan Stern finds out that the agency he runs has cast away the target of NH from the rest of the universe ...

Posted by: JRehling Jan 28 2008, 07:55 PM

This slight has been bothering me for some time. For now, though, all of the links for Pluto still work (!), they just aren't connected to the front page.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Pluto

Maybe the Planetary Society would like to create their own splash page that links to Pluto just like the other eight?

I'd thrown in an Eris link, too. (But the above URL template subbing Eris in does not exist.)

Posted by: tedstryk Jan 28 2008, 08:09 PM

What would be logical in my mind is to put "the Kuiper belt" in the place where Pluto once was. The asteroids are currently lumped in "small bodies," which doesn't work for the big KBOs. Right now, the images could simply be categorized within that category like they are for planetary systems. At least they would be easier to be find.

Posted by: nprev Jan 28 2008, 08:49 PM

No kidding... . Somebody's gonna get an earful & a half.

I like Ted's KBO suggestion a lot, though. Come to that, they should also add the main asteroid belt to the graphic, given Dawn as well as legacy imagery of Ida, Gaspra, Eros, etc. "Small bodies" is a bit too broad of a category, IMHO.

Posted by: elakdawalla Jan 28 2008, 08:56 PM

I've chatted with some folks at JPL and it seems Pluto's going to be added to the Small Bodies section.

I also wouldn't mind seeing asteroid belt and a trans-Neptunian object belt being added to the graphic, even if all of them wound up linking to the "asteroids and comets" section for images. On one hand, Pluto and many other big things in the Kuiper Belt are bigger than the asteroids. On the other hand, Photojournal is a place that is primarily for disseminating pretty pictures to the public, and there's no relationship between the physical size of an object and the quality of the pictures we have from it. We have much much much much better photos of tiny things like Gaspra and Eros and Tempel 1 than we will have of Pluto for the next 6 years, and who knows when we'll ever have any decent pictures of any of those other large objects out there.

--Emily

Posted by: nprev Jan 29 2008, 12:53 AM

I'd even go as far as adding a little comet icon that redirects to just comet images. After all, the graphic's primary function is as a catalog of object images (although, yeah, it's definitely eye candy as well); can't be that hard to partition comets, conventional asteroids, and KBOs/TNOs into separate directories for ease of use.

Posted by: tedstryk Jan 29 2008, 03:00 AM

My wife was looking over my shoulder when I was reading this thread, and she suggests that while they are at it, they change the label "Mars" to "Ted's Birthplace."

Posted by: tedstryk Jan 29 2008, 12:17 PM

Actually, no it isn't. It is about navigability. It is about navigability, and small bodies, placed in the lower left with a picture of a comet, is not where a novice would think to look for Pluto and not a fitting category that leads to it being easy to find. I have other serious problems with the the photojournal setup, such as the fact that if there are a lot of images in a category, you have to plod through 10 at a time after the first 100. The current format, while it now has spiffier graphics than it originally did, has followed the same basic format since 1998, a format that worked well at the time and continues to work well for targets with limited coverage. But for targets like Mars, it has become way to big for the current setup.

Another interesting note. The original 1998 graphic didn't have Pluto, probably owing to the lack of good pictures for the graphic and the lack of any pictures of Pluto on the original photojournal.



We are also cautioned, "For the near future, to properly interact with the Photojournal, you will need at least Netscape version 1.1N. We are planning on implementing a similar interface for other browsers. ;-)"

Posted by: JRehling Jan 29 2008, 01:48 PM

Putting a link for Pluto similar to that of Neptune, etc., is not an explicit statement as to Pluto is a planet or not. It's just saying "here are Pluto images, and we believe that Pluto is one of the things people want to navigate to". It would be a debate in semiotics as to how much that is a statement of what class of world Pluto is. But I've seen plenty of astronomy resources (print and web) list the Sun and the Moon in a parallel manner to the planets. Nobody's claiming that the Sun is a planet but it still has a link from the Photojournal site. I'd like to know if the Sun got more clicks than Pluto during the time Pluto was on there. I would certainly bet that Pluto beat some of the planets out.

But beyond that, there was never a reason why anyone was compelled to agree with an IAU ruling. If a council of musicians dictates that Miles Davis did not play jazz, I am not compelled to agree with them. Nor am I compelled to agree with the IAU, even if the vote had been unanimous, which it obviously was not.

It's of course useful to have catalog names for the various dim stars and the smaller craters on the Moon, so people can have some means to communicate on the matter. The labeling of Pluto serves no such use; it's mere pedantry, and it's going to remain controversial for a long time, and will quite possibly be reversed. I think it would be reasonable (for two reasons I've listed here) to give planet-like links to Pluto and perhaps Eris. Taking the Pluto link away had the foolish result of indicating that something had somehow changed in a real way after the IAU ruling. Now if an impact shattered Pluto into many small pieces, I might be inclined to agree. But a label applied by a vote does not translate into executive action.

Posted by: djellison Jan 29 2008, 02:35 PM

1) This debate is, really, nothing about that
2) That debate is on the 'banned' list for UMSF.

Multiple posts have been deleted, and Laurele has been suspended for 2 weeks for ranting. A breach of the written 'don't rant' rule, and the unwritten Pluto debate rule.

Posted by: Del Palmer Jan 29 2008, 03:22 PM

Post content deleted - Ignoring Admin request in Post 19.

Posted by: vmcgregor Jan 30 2008, 07:29 AM

Thanks for pointing this out. I'm checking on it with the Photojournal and hope to have an answer (and resolution) very soon. Perhaps a dwarf planet section to include Pluto, Ceres, and Eris (and others yet to be discovered).

Veronica

Posted by: elakdawalla Jan 31 2008, 09:39 PM

Hey, check it out! Pluto's back.

--Emily

Posted by: djellison Jan 31 2008, 09:58 PM

I think the mistake was essentially putting Eris and Eros, Pluto and Pallas etc. into one category, located between Saturn and Uranus.

Doug

Posted by: JRehling Jan 31 2008, 11:16 PM

Huzzah! Not only is Pluto back, but there are new pictures!

Six of the seven image descriptions include the disclaimer "Note: There is debate within the science community as to whether Pluto should be classified as a Planet or a dwarf planet." I think that's a comment well worth making, but it probably doesn't need to be made six times on the thumbnail page.

Per Doug's point, it would seem odd to me if they ended up grouping Ceres with Pluto, but not with Vesta. That's sort of like grouping your shoe and a steak together because they weigh the same.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Feb 1 2008, 12:01 AM

Well if it's a leather shoe, then they really are closely related.

Posted by: djellison Feb 1 2008, 08:32 AM

http://multiasciiart.webcindario.com/Ejemplos/homer.gif

Hmmmm - shoes.

Posted by: PhilCo126 Feb 1 2008, 07:02 PM

Well, the asteroids were deleted as 'planets' in 1852 and 155 years later is was Pluto's turn. Deleting the asteroids wasn't easy as well as nowadays' definition of a planet says that a planet has cleared the neigborhood around its orbit... The Trojan asteroids share Jupiter's orbit so the largest planet in the solar system hasn't cleared its neigborhood?
Planet or no planet, ... it's all in the IAU unit

Posted by: hendric Feb 1 2008, 10:44 PM

I guess the IAU thought "a planet is an object that has PWNed it's neighborhood" was a bit too lower-class.

Posted by: David Feb 4 2008, 04:38 AM

However, the asteroids were not universally regarded as planets in the first half of the 19th century. Almost from the beginning -- actually I think from the discovery of Pallas in 1802 -- Sir William Herschel (the discoverer of Uranus, the first "new" planet) disputed the right of the asteroids to be considered planets, based on several factors, including their small size, their occupying similar distances from the sun, and the high inclination of their orbits to the ecliptic plane. It was Herschel who came up with the word "asteroid" for this new category of body which, he opined, was neither star, planet, nor comet. The inclusion of the asteroids (Ceres, Pallas, etc.) among the planets was not so much a classificatory scheme as a convenience of record-keeping; as long as the asteroids were relatively few in number, there was no obvious place to list data concerning them other than the Planets tables of astronomical almanacs. When this kind of listing became notably inconvenient, they were removed to their own table; that is about all that the "deletion" consisted of.

Posted by: PhilCo126 Feb 28 2008, 07:54 PM

More news from the edge of the solar system

Japanese scientists declared Thursday 28th Feb 2008 they are convinced that a ninth planet exists, until now not known, that weighs on the borders of our Solar System, two years after the scientific community excluded from that category.

Well there goes the Titius-Bode law

Posted by: nprev Feb 28 2008, 08:07 PM

Article http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gD2yjCVCevAgLFa_AXH9m51MrqCg.

They're going out on a limb, but not too far. I'll personally be surprised if we don't find several Mars-sized or better bodies way, way out there in the next few decades.

Posted by: tedstryk Feb 28 2008, 08:31 PM

It would certainly be cool. I got excited when I saw the article title...I thought they had actually spotted it.

Posted by: nprev Feb 28 2008, 09:52 PM

We're talking a tremendous volume of space here, after all, easily many times that of the "classical" Solar System. They'll be some interesting stuff there; bet on it! I'm not even prepared to rule out a midget version of Uranus or Neptune at this point, but it'd have to be a long way out.

Posted by: climber Sep 25 2008, 08:04 PM

Not an insult actualy. Nice song by Clare and the reason.
Here are the lyrics :
Lyrics to Pluto :
Pluto I have some frightful news dear
in the New York Times
They've just reported you've been overthrown (aah ahh ahh)
from your solar throne for good

Pluto they say that you can't handle
your own gravity
well how can you overcome your body force
to clear the path for your own orbit

Now all the planets will gather around and have a thing for you
They'll wrap their orbits warmly around you and send you off with love
Chin up pluto the stars still want you and we down here do too
you know what to do, just keep on keeping on

Pluto I have some frightful news dear
in the New York Times
They've just reported you've been overthrown (aah ahh ahh)
from your solar throne for good

Here is a link to watch and listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptgSD2ilzEo

Posted by: mcaplinger Sep 25 2008, 11:43 PM

Not my personal opinion but still somewhat amusing:
http://xkcd.com/473/

Posted by: nprev Sep 27 2008, 11:19 AM

...Mike, you are a very sick man, it's appreciated, and thanks for sharing this!!!