My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets. Since 24th August 2006, children have had to find a new mnemonic for the names of the planets in the solar system, because on that day the International Astronomical Union voted to remove Pluto from the list of planets. The peculiar story of the fall of Pluto shows how human nature and politics can interfere even in astronomy, the most ethereal and beautiful of sciences.
The story starts over 200 years ago, in the back garden of a house in Bath, when William Herschel discovered a new planet—the first in modern times. In an act of spectacular grovelling, Herschel tried to call the planet Georgium sidus (George’s star). The name didn’t stick—the planet was named Uranus—but George III took the point; he granted Herschel a pension that allowed him to give up teaching music to young ladies and take up astronomy full time.
Herschel hadn’t stumbled on Uranus by chance. He was one of the first astronomers to realise the importance of systematic surveys, and over several thousand cold nights, he surveyed the whole sky five times. During the second of these surveys, he discovered Uranus, which he knew must be a planet because it slowly moved across the sky from night to night, unlike stars, which stay fixed in position.
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