"Mike Raiford" <mra### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message 
news:42ee0b54$1@news.povray.org...
>
> I thought the 10th planet was supposed to be called Rupert.

I knew a guy named Grant Rupert at school. :-)

The more I read, the more I'm skeptical of this new "planet" being anything 
other than another Pluto-like or Kuiper Belt object. The orbit is so far 
inclined to the ecliptic and comes very near to Neptune's orbit, similar to 
Pluto. Astronomers continue to debate the whole thing about what Pluto 
really is already so I think they need to get all that in order first before 
calling these things planets. Would be funny if all those larger things that 
are being found were actually Neptune moons thrown free at some point in 
time. Always has been some curiosity concerning the lack of many moons for 
Neptune, and if they were large that might help explain how they escaped. 
But then, I'm no astronomer so I can't really speculate.

I found out Rupert was a nickname for a fictional planet called Persephone. 
Interestingly, a couple other references to Persephone exist: in a Larry 
Niven story and a Star Trek map!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_X

That name would probably be suitable, after reading from the link to that 
name. Curious thing that the Matrix movie had both Persephone and Morpheus 
as character names, very fitting for that movie. These being Greek names 
strays from the current Roman naming of the nine planets (even though they 
are basically translations from Greek ones FAIK).

Bob

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