pluto is delisted

You know it's big news whenMajor League Baseball has an article on this.

Pluto has been sent down.

It was only a matter of time.

Small body, never got hot, kind of distant.

Astronomers made the decision at their version of the winter meetings, the International Astronomical Union in Prague. The news was announced to inhabitants of our own planet on Thursday, possibly the biggest news story in our lives (think about it) but a crushing blow to the hopes and dreams of the little guy.

cbc has an interactive flash on the solar system that now excludes pluto.

bbc has a good article.

Pluto, which was discovered in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh, will be referred to as a "dwarf planet".[Photo: Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, which had a run of 76 years as a planet. (Will Yurman/AP)]

In an update article there is a backlash against the decision by astronomers to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

Greg @ Holiness Reeducation has this note:

Well it is official, Pluto is no longer one of us. Long considered the ninth planet of our solar system, Pluto has been sent to the minors. Why? it isn’t big enough, doesn’t have the rights gravitational pull and frankly, the scientists just seem to have it out for little Pluto. We are Pluto’s advocates? I mean now everything changes. Countless science fair projects with spinningstyrofoam orbs no longer matter. No longer is it true that My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. (An acronym to remember the planets. Now she serves us nothing.) Gustav Holtz’s The Planets no longer seems incomplete without Pluto. And Mickey’s dog seems even sillier than before. So goes yet another truth of our childhood, something we have held on to, memorized, and answered on standardized testing.

Here are a couple of photoshopped photos of pluto