“AlicesAstroInfo (Great site btw & quick work! ) Said on Oct. 7th, 2008 at 5:19 pm :

“You’re wrong! It’s not a watermelon – it’s a pumpkin! I have incontrovertible proof: http://alicesastroinfo.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/new-images-from-mercury/

Okay. Good idea. I’ll alter my ‘planetary fruit’ accordingly :

Mercury can now be a pumpkin,

Venus an orange (Jupiter a pineapple – massive and colourful?)

Eris can be the watemelon,

Haumea (ex-2003 EL-61, 1/3rd Pluto’s size & egg-shaped by its fast spin but recently called a Dwarf planet – & people thinkof iot like this : dwarfs are still people, dwarf stars are still stars, dawrf planets therefore must still be planets!) fits in well as a grape.

Makemake can be a potato

Pallas a cucumber &

Vesta a rambutan (red for its lava history and tough skin, likewise,
sweet inside, tropical fruit for those who don’t know.)

Okay is that uh ..every planet now!? Reckon so …

—-

“… he had left out a planet. It was not his fault; everyone leaves it out. I leave it out myself when I list the nine planets, because it is the four-and-a-halfth planet. I’m referring to Ceres; a small but respectable world that doesn’t deserve the neglect it receives.”
- Page 63, chapter 5 “The World Ceres” in ‘The Tragedy of the Moon’ by
Isaac Asimov, Mercury Press, 1973.

“Still there is no rule that says a planet has to be larger than a certain size and despite its smallness, Ceres would certainly have entered the list of planets if Piazzi’s discovery had remained as it was.”
- P. 63, Asimov, Isaac, ‘The Tragedy of the Moon’, Mercury Press, 1973.

“I consider it quite conceivable that the day may come when Ceres will be the astronomical centre of the solar system.”
- P. 66, Asimov, Isaac, ‘The Tragedy of the Moon’, Mercury Press, 1973.

“Nice, but of course there are many smaller planets in our solar system, and even smaller extra-solar planets known.”

May we presume this the Alan S.Stern of New Horizons, NASA and Pluto & ice dwarfs fame?

If so :

Awesome! You, sir, are a legend!
Great work & great to see you here, you are one of my heroes!

BTW. Did you read my defence of Pluto’s rightful planetary status on this site on some earlier threads? If so, what did you think? Hope you appreciated it. I quoted your verdict of the IAU ‘s definition as “idiotic” and completely agree.

Y’know they actually called certain areas on that Neptunean moon cantalopue terrain.

So lessee now every planet has to have its own fruit or vegetable ..

Mercury = watermelon

Venus = One of them orange -yellow capiscum’s (hot & sweet)

Earth = basket of all of them & the Moon = cauliflower (grey)

Mars = asparagus (Well according to one of the guys from Phoenix)

Ceres = lychee (small & tasty with lots of water)

Jupiter = Ginat Ki;ller Tomato (Great Red Spot)

Saturn = Huge sweet rockmelon (Colour sort of works also very sweet & everyone’s fave!)

Ouranos = cabbage (No odour jokes please, just because its the least popular -almost. Betetr be careful Ouranos or they’llkick youout too! )

Neptune = Blueberry (Fairly small a bit sour, very blue, sorta how we all feel about it trying knocking Pluto from its last planet role.)

& Triton = Cantelkoupe – (For its ‘Canteloupe terrain” as noted.)

Pluto = raspberry (That’s what its giving back at the IAU & its pretty red -and, yes durnnit, it is too a planet! )

Eris = Umm .. Nup all the fruit are taken the solar system stops here!

“on Thursday Cassini makes its closest flyby yet of Enceladus. 25 km folks! Don’t it just make you GRIN?!”

OH yes (As a random bit of trivia, it was the Head of Geology at a local uni raving about how cool Enceladus was that cinched my decision to do geology, not astronomy. At any rate, it’s FAR easier to get in to planetary studies / astrogeology via geology!)

Anyway, beautiful picture! Made my evening

GASP! There’s a monolith buried there! j/k

Good to see the cool images from MESSENGER are making their rounds. I wonder what other cool things on this hot rock await.

Correct. Since we are more than halfway out of the sun’s gravity well, it takes more energy to negate orbital momentum and get to Mercury than it takes to raise orbital momentum enough to leave the solar system. Put another way, Messenger’s flight to Mercury (relatively right next door) is more difficult than New Horizon’s journey to Pluto and on out of the solar system.

- Jack

Thank you, Dr. Plait!

“There’s much we still don’t understand about the smallest planet, even with these fantastic images to help us. In fact, they are only whetting our appetite, but the feast will start soon enough.”

I remember when I was a kid Mercury was considered the littlest planet – Pluto was though of as bigger back then.

This is probably why Mercury’s rays are longer than the moon’s. Objects in Mercury’s vicinity travel much faster in their solar orbits than objects in Earth’s vicinity, hence impacts release more energy.