Dave-Platt%LADC@CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.ARPA (Dave Platt) (01/11/86)
Re the "tenth planet" discovered between Saturn and Uranus... I believe that it is actually called Chiron, rather than Charon. Charon, as David Smith correctly points out, is Pluto's moon. Chiron was discovered a few years ago, and (if my foggy memory is correct) there was a good deal of discussion at the time as to whether it deserves to be called a small planet, a large asteroid, or a "planetoid" (somewhere between the two). I believe that the latter designation was the one generally accepted... but I'm not sure. Does anyone out there have any additional information? I do recall that Chiron is far too small to cause the orbital variations that have been detected in the outer planets... it's smaller than Pluto.