Minor Planets Their Place in the Solar System

Throughout history, stargazers focused on the Sun, Moon, planets, and comets. Those were the objects in Earths neighborhood and easy to spot in the sky. However, it turns out there are other interesting objects in the solar system that arent comets, planets or moons. Theyre small worlds orbiting out in the darkness. They got the general name minor planet.   Sorting the Solar System Prior to 2006, every object in orbit around our Sun was sorted into specific categories: planet, minor planet, asteroid, or a comet. However, when the issue of Plutos planetary status was raised that year, a new term, dwarf planet, was introduced and immediately some astronomers began to apply it to Pluto.   Since then, the most well-known minor planets were reclassified as dwarf planets, leaving behind only a few minor planets that populate the gulfs between planets. As a category they are numerous, with more than 540,000 officially known to date. Their sheer numbers make  them still rather important objects to study in our solar system. What is a Minor Planet? Simply, a minor planet is any object in orbit around our Sun that is not a planet, dwarf planet, or a comet.  Its almost like playing process of elimination. Still, knowing something is a minor planet vs. a comet or dwarf planet is rather useful. Each object has a unique formation and evolutionary history. The first object to be classified a minor planet was the object Ceres, which orbits in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.  However, in 2006 Ceres was officially re-classified as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It has been visited by a spacecraft called Dawn, which has solved some of the mystery surrounding Cerean formation and evolution. How Many Minor Planets are there? The  minor planets catalogued by the IAU Minor Planet Center, located at  the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.  The vast majority of these little worlds  are in the Asteroid Belt and are also considered asteroids. There are also populations elsewhere in the solar system, including the Apollo and Aten asteroids, which orbit inside or near Earths orbit, the Centaurs — which exist between Jupiter and Neptune, and many of the objects known to exist in the Kuiper Belt and Oà ¶rt Cloud regions.   Are Minor Planets Just Asteroids? Just because asteroid belt objects are considered minor planets it does not mean that all of them are simply asteroids.  Ultimately there are lots of objects, including asteroids, that fall into the minor  planet category. Some, such as the so-called Trojan Asteroids, orbit in the plane of another world, and are studied closely by planetary scientists. Each object in each category has a specific history, composition, and orbital characteristics. While they may seem similar, their classification is a matter of great importance. What about Comets? The one non-planet hold out are comets. These are objects made almost entirely of ice, mixed with dust and small rocky particles. Like asteroids, they date back to the earliest epochs of solar system history. Most comet chunks (called nuclei) exist in the Kuiper Belt or Oà ¶rt Cloud, orbiting happily until they are nudged into a sunward orbit by gravitational influences. Until relatively recently, no one had explored a comet up close, but beginning in 1986 that changed. Comet Halley was explored by a small flotilla of spacecraft. Most recently, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was visited and studied by the Rosetta spacecraft.   Its Classified Classifications of objects in the solar system are always subject to change. Nothing is set in stone (so to speak).  Pluto, for example, has been a planet and a dwarf planet, and may well regain its planetary classification in light of the New Horizons missions discoveries in 2015. Exploration has a way of giving astronomers new information about objects. That data, covering such topics as surface characteristics, size, mass, orbital parameters, atmospheric composition (and activity), and other subjects, immediately changes our perspective on such places as Pluto and Ceres. It tells us more about how they formed and what shaped their surfaces. With new information, astronomers can tweak their definitions of these worlds, which helps us understand the hierarchy and evolution of objects in the solar system. Edited and expanded by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Primary Education Of Upper Class Children - 872 Words

Primary education of upper-class children in colonial days included reading, writing, basic math, poems, and prayers. Education was provided for white students only and was privately taught: the purpose was to prepare children for their eventual roles in plantation life. During this time while males studied advanced academic subjects, the females learned to assume the role of the mistress of a plantation. It was not until the 1840s that an organized system existed. Education reformers like Thomas Jefferson with the common school, John Dewey with progressive education and E.D Hirsch with cultural literacy, who with their contributions helped shape the educational system we have today. Thomas Jefferson, the â€Å"Man of the People,† is best known for drafting the Declaration of Independence, but he also wrote prolifically and prophetically about education. â€Å"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be,† he wrote in a letter to a friend. Common school advocates like Jefferson worked to establish a free elementary education accessible to everyone and financed by public funds. Jefferson understood that freedom depends on self-government and that education contributes to both the knowledge and virtues that form a self-governing citizen. Jefferson sought to teach â€Å"all children of the state reading, writing, and common arithmetic.† Jefferson viewed this basic education as instrumental in securing â€Å"life, liberty, andShow MoreRelatedRace and Social Inequality in Education1382 Words   |  6 PagesMajor social institutions affect society, humanity, and prosperity in different ways. 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Auteur Theory free essay sample

As far as I know, there is no definition of the auteur theory in the English language, that is, by an American or British critic† (Sarris 1962) was the opening line to Andrew Sarris’s famous â€Å"Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962† essay. This essay is what brought the â€Å"auteur theory† in to the spotlight in the USA. And to today, this theory is still in hot debate. Trying to figure out whether or not the director is the lone â€Å"auteur† of a film is a tough claim to make. In an article for Slate Magazine, Doree Shafrir talks about why a writer cannot be an auteur in â€Å"Bored of Directors. In his film blog, Fredrik Fevang posted an article about misconceptions of auteur theory critics titled â€Å"Dan Schneider and James Berardinellis misconception of the auteur theory. † As a comparison article, A. R. Duckworth posted a comparison article in The Journal of Film, Art, and Aesthetics of the never-ending dispute between Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael entitled â€Å"A Couple of Squared Circles. We will write a custom essay sample on Auteur Theory or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page † This article cites much of Pauline Kael’s essay, in response to Sarris’s, â€Å"Circles And Squares. † Terrence Rafferty from NY Times wrote an article entitled â€Å"Now Playing: Auteur vs. Auteur† which follows a fight between a writer and director over the title of auteur on Babel. In a post from the University of Manchester, the author Jim covers a director that does not leave anyone out of the creative process in his post â€Å"The Case of Mike Leigh and the Missing Auteur. † While I believe that there are multiple creative minds that go in to a film and that in some cases, it is very possible to have someone other than the director be the auteur, Sarris summed it up by saying â€Å"Directors, even auteurs, do not always run true to form, and the critic can never assume that a bad director will always make a bad film. No, not always, but almost always, and that is the point† (Sarris 1962). â€Å"The term auteur first entered the cinematic lexicon in French New Wave director Francois Truffauts 1954 essay ‘A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,’ which appeared in the influential film journal Cahiers du Cinema† (Shafrir 2006). Merriam-Webster defines auteur theory as â€Å"a view of filmmaking in which the director is considered the primary creative force in a motion picture. † Truffaut’s theory never became anything in the United States until Andrew Sarris wrote of it in his essay. Sarris went in-depth with his understanding of the theory, and what he believed. He also states that the theory is a pattern theory in constant flux (Sarris 1962). The auteur theory has been misconstrued since Sarris’s essay, and these misconceptions have brought on much of the criticism. Fredrik Fevang’s article is about two of the big name critics of the auteur theory (Dan Schneider and James Berardinelli), and their lack of understanding of the theory. Both reject the theory with faulty argumentation†¦ it is in their discussion on auteur theory that I find the two guilty of misinterpretation†¦ Schneider making the mistake of equating a director with a novelist, Berardinelli being guilty of disregarding the directors personal influence on and affiliation to his work† (Fevang 2009). While these two critics have clearly based their opposition on these misconstrued interpretations, the biggest critic Pauline Kael does not. Kael’s famous â€Å"A Co uple of Squared Circles† essay was her rebuttal to Andrew Sarris’s essay. In it, Kael responded to Sarris’s visual version of the auteur theory using 3 circles. That the theory â€Å"may be visualized as three concentric circles: the outer circle as technique; the middle circle, personal style; and the inner circle, interior meaning† (Sarris 1962). A. R. Duckworth sums up Kael’s responses to these layers with â€Å"the ‘outer circle’†¦of a director’s basic technical competence, is either a weak premise, a commonplace attitude of artistic judgment †¦or a complete misunderstanding of the necessarily talents required for the production of art† (Duckworth 2009). Pauline Kael argues that â€Å"the greatness of a director like [Jean] Cocteau has nothing to do with mere technical competence: his greatness is in being able to achieve his own personal expression and style† (Kael 1979). As for the middle circle about â€Å"the distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value† (Sarris 1962), Kael writes â€Å"Traditionally, in any art, the personalities of all those involved in a production have been a factor in judgment, but that the distinguishability of personality should in itself be a criterion of value completely confuses normal judgment.