‘Dr. Sky’ fights for Pluto’s status

Steve Kates hasn’t forgotten Pluto. More than nine months after Pluto lost its designation as a planet, Kates is leading a local effort to regain that status.

Kates, of Chandler, is a radio and TV personality known as “Dr. Sky” who interviews famous scientists and astronauts.

“We need to return Pluto to its rightful designation,” he said, adding that the planet has for too long been a part of culture and science to set aside. “Kids love Pluto, because it’s small like they are.”

Pluto was discovered at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff by Clyde Tombaugh on Feb. 18, 1930.

On Aug. 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union voted to make Pluto a dwarf planet. New definitions were written for planets that excluded the formerly ninth planet.

Kates established a Web site, www.keepplutoalive.com, that honors Tombaugh with history and interviews. He is also asking supporters of Pluto as a planet to e-mail the union and urge a change of heart.

His Web site follows a nationwide protest to the decision, including a proclamation by the New Mexico Legislature that declares Pluto a planet.

Immediately following the August vote, Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, led an effort to gather more than 300 signatures from planetary scientists worldwide on a petition asking that Pluto be reinstated as a planet. Multiple other projects nationwide took off seeking to return Pluto to its planetary status when the union meets again in 2009.

“I think it’s nuts,” Sykes said of the change. “I think it would be a mistake for people to rush to try to change textbooks.”

Many scientists have just ignored the new designation and continue to call Pluto a planet, he said.

Dozens of children, who are among the 1,000 visitors a month to the Gilbert Rotary Centennial Observatory at the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch, have been asking questions about the new status of Pluto, Win Pendleton said.

Pendleton, a retired professor and director of astronomy programs with the Riparian Institute, said he agrees with the new designation, partly because Pluto is an “odd” planet. And, he said, dozens of new objects are being discovered that are similar to Pluto, which could lead to so many planets that they become insignificant and difficult to remember.

“We have since discovered in the last 10 years, several large round rocky objects in the solar system that are larger than Pluto,” he said. “They’re very similar to Pluto, go around the sun in an orbit.”

The issue hits close to home for Kates, who met Tombaugh while studying at New Mexico State University. While he said it’s his scientific principles that convince him the planet Tombaugh discovered by comparing photographs of the sky is a real planet, he admits the issue is also emotional.

“He was just a natural, you don’t see that in people,” he said of Tombaugh, who died in 1997. “My mission is to keep his memory alive.”

For more information, visit www.drsky.com.