“Pluto and the uber-nerds”

Fred Watson, Anglo-Australian Observatory at Coonabarabran

Wednesday 7 July 2010 at 7 pm

Conference Room 1, Darlington Centre, University of Sydney

When is a planet not a planet? When it’s a dwarf-planet, perhaps? So what’s the difference? In 2006, astronomy’s governing body, the International Astronomical Union, wrestled with this very question at their General Assembly in Prague. Before we knew it, media all around the world had declared that Pluto had been “dumped” from its status as the ninth planet, hinting that it had been unfairly thrown out of the Solar System. And in 2008 things got worse, with Pluto joining the lowly ranks of a new class of objects with the unflattering name of Plutoids. In this entertaining and fully illustrated journey through Pluto’s eventful history, Fred Watson debates whether pragmatism and good science should prevail over sentiment and tradition.

Fred Watson says he has spent so many years working in large telescope domes that he has started to look like one. He is Astronomer in Charge of the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Coonabarabran, where his main scientific interest is gathering information on very large numbers of stars and galaxies. He is also an adjunct professor at the Queensland University of Technology, the University of Southern Queensland, and James Cook University. Fred is the author of “Stargazer: The Life and Times of the Telescope”, and is a regular broadcaster on ABC radio. His new book “Why is Uranus upside down?” is based on listener questions, and was published in October 2007 and won the 2008 Queensland Premier’s Literary Prize for Science Writing. In 2003, Fred received the David Allen Prize for communicating astronomy to the public, and in 2006 was the winner of the Australian Government Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science. Fred has an asteroid named after him (5691 Fredwatson), but says that if it hits the Earth it won’t be his fault …