Now that New Horizons has provided us with a fascinating view of the dwarf planet Pluto, some are thinking it is time to restore Pluto to its rightful place among the full planets. If you agree, you might want to visit change.org, which has a petition with about 4,300 names on it as of today.
And what does this group want? Hopefully, the petitioners can capture the attention of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which is the same culprit that knocked Pluto off the planetary list:
I am wondering if I need to start a petition for Eris, also floating out there with Pluto, or even Ceres (shown below), now being studied by the Dawn spacecraft. With the five dwarf planets, we would have 13 officials planet for now. I say the more the merrier.The IAU meets again for its general assembly in August 2015. And in the coming weeks, New Horizons will collect unprecedented amounts of data about the Pluto system, calling in to question the definition set forth by the IAU.
