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Very interesting topic, Granny Skot. Such is the disagreement even among astronomers over the classification of planets, necessitating ultimately a vote to determine their definition, that it seems inevitable that sources will remain in disagreement for generations to come.

I remember the earlier proposal mentioned to evade the issue by eliminating the catch-all term 'planet' from use altogether, replacing it with 'terrestrial planet', 'gas giant', etc., by which system Pluto and all the KBOs would be in a group of their own but the conventionally accepted planets even to Neptune would also find themselves split into two separate labels.

I also recall reading last summer the proposal of one of the discoverers of the KBO estimated to exceed Pluto in size, I think it was Michael Brown, who suggested, in a gesture of scientific humility before popular culture, that it should be not astronomers but the tradition of popular belief that ultimately determines that Pluto should be retained as a planet. This left me wondering whether some astronomers feel a little isolated from society and typecast as 'nerdy scientists', to the extent that when a scientific discovery confounds a popular tradition they feel the need to cowtow to the tradition in order to be perceived as more in tune with the rest of society. As a non-astronomer, but with the greatest of respect for science, I instinctively took precisely the reverse point of view, that regardless of the popularity of any popular tradition, if new scientific discoveries discredit it then the text-books deserve to be rewritten.

Have to go out now, but it sounds from the end of the article as though at least some astronomers are expecting to have Pluto formally declassified as a planet on grounds of its eccentric orbit, on which basis we can perhaps safely presume the same will apply to virtually all the KBOs even if mass is not used as a criterion.

This needn't affect astrological practice in any way, of course - it's a purely scientific and nomenclature issue. Whether Pluto is classed by scientific consensus as a planet or not, astrologers will continue to attribute influence to it, whether speculatively or through extensive empirical research.

Philip