#especially haumea and pluto and makemake and eris

[neon-catarina]

Can make some "pluto and dwarf planets" doodles?

i love these guys 💕💕

[heliosphere-underthesky]

Some random facts about the dwarf planets!

Pluto: The prince. May seem nonchalant, like he doesn't care. But he does care a lot; he can show a lot of emotion, just for the right things and the right people. That was a huge reason why Sun thought he was fit to be the Prince of the Kuiper Belt. He has a heart-shaped birthmark that Charon doesn't seem to know about; it's uncertain.

Ceres: She's leader material. She's often seen mingling with different people everyday in the Asteroid Belt, putting on a cheerful face. She looks after the different asteroids, both humanoid and non humanoid (more animal / creature-like). She keeps it civil, but may harbour some resentment for some planets, especially Jupiter. This is mainly due to the treatment of asteroids and how the belt is believed to have come to be.

Haumea: The dancer of the group, who loves perfecting her ballerina spin. She dreams of going closer to the Sun someday and showing him her dance troupe. She believes it's worthy enough to represent some of the talent from Kuiper Belt, as she is able to spin even faster than Jupiter.

Makemake: The artist of the group, who loves being by the sidelines and observing the world around him and his moon. Dons a rabbit-like outfit as he was nicknamed Easterbunny, but also some of his designs are meant to look both like fur and feathers. This is because he was named after the deity, who was the chief god of the "Tangata manu" or the bird-man sect.

Eris: The singer of the group. She's albino. Unlike Haumea, she doesn't really dream of going closer to the sun due to light sensitivity, and she always wears protective gear and sunglasses the closer she gets to the Sun if she must. Some may perceive her to be lonely; which she may feel sometimes, but she is perfectly content spending time away from everyone else with only her moon to accompany her.

[morganthefae]

It’s been 20 years since Pluto was reclassified, so it baffles me that people still insist it’s a planet. I can understand not researching why it was reclassified if that’s not something that interests you – it doesn’t exactly affect most of our day-to-day lives – but what i don’t understand is not bothering to look into it and still claiming to have an opinion.

I’m going to start by telling a story from two hundred years ago, so bear with me, because i promise this is relevant. In 1801, an Italian astronomer discovered what appeared to be a new planet between Mars and Jupiter, which he called Ceres. Everyone was super excited, and more astronomers started studying the area, and they found some more new planets, starting with Pallas, Juno, and Vesta. As more and more objects kept cropping up, people started to wonder, “Wait, can there really be a whole buttload of new planets between Mars and Jupiter, or is there something else going on here?” So after studying the new objects in as much depth as possible, and seeing all the ways they were different from the other planets, it was determined that these were not actually planets at all, and the new term ‘asteroid’ was created to describe them.

This is essentially the same thing that happened to Pluto. When it was first discovered, the equipment we had couldn’t really make out any details about it, and even seeing that it was there was difficult. Scientists kept studying Pluto, of course, and as our telescopes became more powerful and we developed more ways to study objects in space, we began to notice that Pluto didn’t really seem like a planet as we understood the term. (Though it’s worth noting that there was no scientific definition of the term ‘planet’ at the time.) For example, Pluto’s orbital path is highly elongated and even crosses Neptune’s orbit. Even when i was growing up, the textbooks would be scratching their heads, going, “Comets cross planetary orbits, but we’ve never heard of a planet other than Pluto doing this.” The plane Pluto orbits in is also weird – all the planets in our solar system, and planets in other star systems, orbit in basically a straight line around their star: if you draw a line through the center of a star, it’ll also hit all the planets, wherever they are in their orbits. Except Pluto. Pluto’s orbit is at a strong angle compared to the planets’ orbital planes, which is weird for a planet in any star system, but completely normal for a comet.

Then astronomers started discovering other bodies in the same part of space as Pluto. There was Quaoar, Makemake, Haumea, Sedna, and a whole lot more that i can’t remember offhand, but the final straw for Pluto was Eris, which is more massive than Pluto and raised the question – if Pluto is a planet, then Eris must be too, but on the other hand Pluto’s never really fit into the category we understand as planet, but on the other hand, what even is a planet anyway?

The official reason Pluto was reclassified is because it doesn’t make up the majority of mass in its orbit; like Ceres and the other asteroids, it’s only one of a belt of similar objects, rather than its own thing. Everybody hates the official definition of a planet, which has three criteria: a body has to be big enough that its own gravity makes it round, so Pluto is big enough to be a planet; it has to be in orbit around a star instead of another body (this requirement was written to rule out moons, but planetary scientists hate it because it overlooks rogue planets, which aren’t in orbit around anything); and it has to dominate the mass in its orbit. That’s officially why Pluto isn’t a planet, but it fails to account for all the ways Pluto was recognized as un-planet-like for decades before that, like the weirdness with its orbit that i already mentioned. That’s especially true now that we can analyze its chemical makeup and find out that, once again, it’s more similar to a comet than anything else. All available evidence suggests that Pluto is a big-ass comet, and it baffles me that people still insist on calling Pluto a planet in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Any definition of planet has to be evenly applied, across not only our solar system but every system astronomers are able to study, and arbitrarily rewriting that only for Pluto is weird to me. Pluto is one of many similar objects in the Kuiper Belt, so its accurate designation is a Kuiper Belt Object.

If you know all this and still call Pluto a planet, you’re gonna have to explain why. If your reasoning is, “We used to think Pluto was a planet, so we should always call it a planet,” an argument i’ve seen from time to time, you’re going to have to call Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta planets too. If you think the reason Pluto was reclassified because it’s “too small,” by far the most common argument i’ve seen, you’re going to have to explain where you think the size line is drawn, why you don’t count Eris as a planet, and potentially why Mercury is still considered a planet as well.

[cyanogen-miasma]

I really don't like characterizations of Pluto (the dwarf planet, not the Roman god or the cartoon dog) where it is butthurt about being demoted from planet to dwarf planet. Humans have known about Pluto for an immensely small portion of Pluto's lifespan (Pluto hasn't even had a full year since we discovered it), let alone actually been around, y'know, because all of the astronomical bodies are around in geological deep time and humans have been around for a tiny amount of that time...do you think Pluto has been sitting in the dark waiting for humans to evolve on Earth and thinking "notice me senpai"? Pluto does not give a shit what Earth's fleas think of it!

Furthermore, the eight planets simply would not bully Pluto for being a dwarf planet now. The definition of a planet is arbitrary and externally applied to them...I could possibly see the argument for Earth being Like That, but the thoughts of the planet can't have been the exact same as the thoughts of the animals living on it for all of deep time. and why would the other planets feel the same way. Jupiter, especially, would not care! he's massive! he's got bigger and better things to be doing, like murdering comets!! As for Uranus and Neptune, those are Pluto's buddies! They are pals! Do not separate! None of the astronomical bodies should care who is a planet and who is a dwarf planet because it is an arbitrary definition that has only just been applied by Earth's fleas who have only existed for the blink of an eye for these planets! THEY DO NOT CARE! this extends to asteroids as well

also the "your anus" joke is my villain origin story. Uranus is my fave (unironically) and I don't stand for this slander. The thing just sits there and rolls around, it's vibing!! yes yes, anus, very funny. it is named after the fucking god of the sky. BLAME THE ANCIENT GREEKS! anyways I love characterizations of Uranus as a pathetic nerd

Also, Pluto and Charon should be a binary dwarf planet system instead of a dwarf planet-moon combo. I don't think size should matter on this but it is in the size range of other transneptunian bodies that are possible dwarf planets (it is actually the sixth largest object in the Kuiper belt behind Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake and Gonggong) so if that were a concern I think that helps. Astronomers, I know you acknowledge that they are tidally locked to each other and have a barycentre outside both bodies, please make it happen!!

I do have a space cats thingy (similar to my element cats) and a lot of the things I've just ranted about are sort of rectified

[astronomyforastrologers]

174567 Varda

174567 Varda (A New Planet!? ~ 18 Jan 2014, Philip Sedgwick)

There is a newly named object in the Kuiper Belt and its estimated diameter of 570 km (plus or minus a wide margin of error) places the object on the cusp of being declared a dwarf planet. A dwarf planet as in yet another object worthy of notation in astrological consultation. This inclusion no doubt annoys those who do not deem Eris, Makemake, Haumea, Sedna and more than a handful of other bodies worthy of interpretation. Maybe though, the implication of this new body is worth noting.

Varda is the new possible dwarf planet. No, not Varda in the Tolkien sense. Varda in an East Indian context. The mythology readily available is scarce as of yet, so I must rely upon more obscure sources. As one source reports it, var is blessing and da is one who bestows. Thus, Varda is a bestower of blessings. Varda correlates with the name of Vishnu’s consort, Lakshmi, a goddess of wealth in Hindu mythology.

Why not include this new goddess given what she represents, especially when starting a new year with Venus retrograde in Capricorn? Maybe new financial aspirations need to be loaded into the goal portfolio. Maybe it’s time to do some blessing counting.

It is interesting to note that upon Googling Varda all the J. R. R. references pop up. A few years ago we had astronomers calling a yet unnamed Kuiper Belt body Snow White during the time when Snow White movies were all the rage. Now as the Hobbit movie and other Tolkien-based productions are doing their thing to fill film studio coffers, it is curious indeed that Varda’s name appears.

Varda is minor solar system body 174567, initially designated as 2003 MW12. It was discovered on June 21, 2003, not far from where I write, at Kitt Peak Observatory. Varda orbits the Sun in 307.91 yrs. This longer than Pluto orbit assures that her implications are intended to be creation-oriented, resurrection-based and ultimately, spiritually uplifting.

Varda comes closest the Sun at 8 Aries 38 while 39.1 astronomical units from the Sun, right about where Pluto is most distant from the Sun. She reaches out to 52.1 astronomical units when at aphelion. Varda’s north node measures at 4 Libra 05. Interestingly, the nodal axis of this maybe planet virtually aligns with the plane of closest and furthest contact points from the Sun. Perhaps this strengthens the import of her message to us all.

Last year we had the naming of the centaur Rhiphonos. Rhiphonos maintains both his node and perihelion in Aries. While strong and protective, that much Aries may be a bit over the top. No worries. Here is Varda to invoke blessings of cooperation, negotiation, arbitration, interpersonal balance and stronger and more enhanced relationship dealings.

No doubt it is a blessing to remain firm in one’s belief while being able to understand the point of view of another, include it, make adjustments, and come out with everyone enjoying net gain. No doubt it is a blessing to value the importance of relationships, whether personal or more collective in scope. Could Varda be playing a hand in the negotiations with Iran regarding nuclear solutions?

Currently Varda is in the middle of Sagittarius at 15 degrees 38 minutes. She’s in the vicinity of the Great Attractor, emphasizing the importance of including all frequencies (points of view) and the need to see around the bend and/or the next horizon. Add to that a transit to several Sag black holes “the practice what you preach” and “be true to your nature instead of dogmas” messages are in play.

Here are some keywords for Varda based upon her node and perihelion:

Positive - Cooperative, receptive, able to negotiate, ability to remain strong in conviction while perceiving another’s point of view, relationship oriented, perception of shared resources in relationship, mi casa es su casa, ability to “get over ones self.”

Negative - Selfish, intractable, uncooperative, unyielding, emotionally self referential, self-serving.

Mundane - Rose color, pink, negotiation, arbitration, counseling, blessings.

Ceremonial - Incantations intended as blessings to self and others, shared energy exercises, couples chakra exercises.

Soon, I’ll add her monthly position to the lists on my website and those of you who have purchased the Galactic Trilogy CD will be receiving updates including this new maybe planet.

Meanwhile, Venus retrograde is in play. So, I’ve made a slight adjustment to my reading recording policies and it just might right in time for the scheduling of a consultation to make sense of new planets, retrograde twists and turns and life in general.

For a reading with a recording, you may receive either (not both) a CD (wav file) of your consultation or an electronic transfer of your recording. If you want an MP3 recording, that is possible, but it will cost an additional $10 due to the time required for conversion. International clients may want to go with the electronic transfer option as mailing internationally adds a $12 charge to cover rising postal service costs.

Note that the electronic transfer or CD is part of an hour session only. Half hour sessions are available for repeat clients and the CD or recording is $10 more.

Check out the store on my website. The files in the Galactic Trilogy CD will soon be plumper with the addition of Varda’s blessings. And that Galactic Report and Twin Stars Relationship Report are sure to wow.

Visit my Website Consultations and Services Quick Order Form Astrological Texts

[quinttee]

Quinton's Animation Extravaganza 781

0781

Other Solar System Sailor Senshi

I was enjoying my day with Miyako, Fluttershy and Quinton Jr. Sailor Ceres had recently joined the Solar System Sailor Senshi Squad and I wondered when or if we would find the Sailor Senshi for the other geophysical planets in our Solar System. Just then, my fellow Powerpuffs and the Mane Six came to our room. They had found out some information about some of the other Sailor Senshi in our Solar System. We immediately gathered around the room and began our conversation. Momoko and Kaoru had found out about three Outer Senshi. Sailor Haumea had a Hawaiian motif, due to her planet being named after a mythological Hawaiian sorceress. Sailor Makemake very primitive in personality. Sailor Eris was very rogue, even more so than Sailor Mars. Meanwhile, Shigeru, Koji and Takashi had found out about four other Outer Senshi. Sailor Orcus was similar in personality to Sailor Pluto. Sailor Quaoar had the spirituality and calmness of an American Indian. Sailor Gonggong had a Chinese motif. Finally, there was Sailor Sedna, who was especially adaptable to cold weather. We wondered when we would find these Senshi, but we decided to just wait and see. For the rest of the day, we all kept an eye out for whenever the Jashinka Empire attacked.

[calg64]

What do the Dwarf Planets mean?

I've been using many of the dwarf planets (trans-Neptunian objects) in all the personal and celebrity charts I've looked at for some months now, and I feel like I have a pretty decent grasp of the planetary archetypes. I'm gonna write some information about each planet to kind of summarise what they represent in astrology

I'm also grouping these planets by their orbital periods, as they seem to be in groups in their orbital period around the sun. The groups seem to carry similar themes too

Also, since there are a lot of these planets, I'll just say quickly which ones are the most important in a chart: Eris and Haumea are the most important from what I've seen (they are also the biggest planets). After that, I'd say that Makemake, Quaoar, and Orcus also play a big role

These planets are related to our need to protect ourselves

Eris: 558 yr orbit. This is the planet that urges you to speak out and fight against anything that you consider to go against your beliefs. It gives you the drive to fight for what you believe in. It also has quite a political nature in it. It is what gives you strong moral convictions and makes you want to voice your opinion loud and clear. It is also related to your ability to stand up for yourself when you or others are being violated, such as when you see someone being rude to a waiter. Eris energy makes you want to speak up against that person

Gonggong: 554 yr orbit. This planet encourages us to see the cause and effect of our actions. This energy is very future-oriented, it wants us to think about what we can do better to have things work in our own favour. Without this energy well-integrated we lack foresight and we feel like we are walking blindly with no direction

These planets are related to our perspective on the world

Quaoar: 286yr orbit. This planet represents the need for us to have dramatic shifts in awareness. Because many people have this planet conjunct Pluto (1993-2004 roughly), it can feel especially difficult for these people to change their mindsets, it can feel like something is preventing this from occurring. But if you can use this energy well, you will feel that you have a fresh perspective on the world and your place in it

Haumea: 284 yr orbit. This planet represents the extent to which you feel connected to the world around you. It inspires you to have faith that things will all work out in the end, because you have faith in the world. Very spiritual energy, it connects you to nature and inspires you to surrender to believe in the natural process of life

Haumea actually enters Scorpio 2 hours from when I'm writing this!! Leaving Libra for the first time since 1994

These planets are kind natured, they are what pull us towards the 'light side' of life

Makemake: 306 yr orbit. This one is bigger than the others (similar in size to Haumea and Gonggong), but smaller than Pluto and Eris. Makemake represents a way of thinking that splits us into a more civilised and a wild self, and assumes the more civilised self is the better of the two (It basically represents our morals). It is associated with self-improvement, and the desire to make oneself more refined in behaviour. It is a very charitable planet, but it can also make someone quite sure of their inherent goodness, despite the fact that their actions show something different (a certain guy from Germany had this conjunct his Sun)

Varda: 313 yr orbit. This Dwarf Planet is associated with our desire to compromise and adjust our behaviour to take into account other people’s needs. It is where we are initially self-effacing and too selfless, leaving us feeling used by others. In healthy expression, self-effacing tendencies turn into compassionate understanding from a place of respect and sympathy for others

Plutino planets deal with taboo topics, and feelings of restriction, they share orbital resonance with Pluto

Orcus: 247 yr orbit.  Orcus' objective is to find (or deny) the truth of any situation. Someone with Orcus integrated well is going to be someone who is self-aware and strongly against lying, both to themselves and others. This planet in hard aspects deals with issues of denial, and it can show hypocrisy too, where someone likes to bring the truth out of others, but fails to live by what they preach

If you made it this far, thank you! I hope this inspires you to try and learn about these planets, they are very useful for understanding yourself and others

[sun-in-retrograde]

Outer Dwarf Planets - Taurus New Moon

This month we have a very very very very Taurus Taurus New Moon. The Sun, Moon, Mercury, the North Node and Jupiter are all in Taurus but rather than speaking about that I wanted to cover the outer planets we ignore. I’m covering:

Eris is the same size as Pluto and honestly it’s a very potent planet whose energies always seem to show up. 

Sedna, Orcus, Makemake, Haumea, Quaoar, Gonggong and Salacia are more subtle in my view, and honestly I use them mostly when they have a close alignment to other planets or to significant natal positions.

Eris has no part in this whole deal - look at your own chart to see if its different for you! Eris is slow so when it has aspects, especially with outer planet bodies or natal positions on your chart they last years and are worth knowing about. Eris energy is fast, agressive, assertive, dangerous, and not really the vobe for Taurus season. With no aspects you may find that energy difficult to access so stay true to your beliefs and don’t let people push you around!

Sedna is trined to Pluto, sextile Mars and conjunct the Sun and Moon. So a lot of energy here! Sedna is usually seen as a planet of trauma, victimhood, and evolution. Conjunct the North Node makes this a powerful time to heal, especially with that transformative Pluto energy coming in. Heck, especially because Pluto is retrograde so old pains may be a little tender and come to the surface for a while.

Sedna is slow it’s making its way out of Taurus. It has one more New Moon to go before its first new moon in Gemini, but then it will immediately retrograde and we’ll be retracing old ground in Taurus for much of the next year. It was in 29 degrees of Taurus July to October 2021, May to December 2022, and will return December 2023 to April 2024. So you may want to play close attention to hurt from this time and understand that this hurt is part of a cycle - Sedna will return to these points again and you can continue to work on releasing pain and healing in future new moons.

Orcus entered Virgo in 2009 and will stay there till 2038. I’ve often seen it described as a little, darker, Pluto. It’s associated with obsession and death. It’s in a close sextile with Venus that for some reason astro.com didn’t pick up on. Venus. Orcus seems well placed to pick up on problems at home or in places you feel emotionally safe. It’s a little voice warning you about red flags and heck, it might not be necessary to act on it right away, but I think it’s always a good idea to *note* this kind of thing

Makemake; Salacia; Quaoar 

Makemake Is in opposition to Salacia and has been active on and off since 2004. The t-square with Quaoar first emerged in 2014. Makemake is often associated with nature, degrowth and loss of resources and Salacia with both the sexual and the hidden. 

The Makemake-Salacia opposition began to be really felt in 2005 under mutable signs as George W Bush began to seriously prepare for a global pandemic and the ideas that formed the response to COVID were coalescing. The Iceland Volcanic eruption of 2010 and the Zombie movie craze seem to have fed into the message of a society preparing to stop. 

Quaoar usually comes into play with revelations and squaring this opposition at new moon might be a chance for us to consider what we lost track of in the pandemics and lock downs that we may want back, and what, we want to get rid of. It may also be a chance to think about the kind of society we want and can afford to have, and consider what we can get rid of to help save the Earth or survive in the difficult post-pandemic economy. These can be difficult questions. Believe in the power of “no”.

Gonggong the planet of outside context problems, hidden knowledge and turning things to a new angle, is conjunct Saturn in Pisces, sextile to Mercury and the North Node in Taurus. This to me seems like a good thing if you want to stay grounded while raising difficult issues. But it has a disadvantage that there’s quite a lot here to slow up progress. 

[yjhgvf]

Broke: Since Pickle wasn’t born but was instead created in the AI!Pickle AU, there would be no Pickle Family. Thus, the Pickle Family Episode can’t happen.

Woke: Since Pickle wasn’t born but was instead created in the AI!Pickle AU, there would be no Pickle Family. Instead, Crusher has a large family and the Pickle Family Episode would have Pickle’s family members replaced with Crusher’s family members.

Presenting The Menadora Family! AKA (a portion of) Crusher’s family in the AI!Pickle AU. I don’t really know how I’m gonna lead into the introduction section so here it is

Bottom Row, Left to Right (Children/Crusher’s Siblings)

Ceres/Crusher (19, Male, he/him): You already know him! Somewhat detached from his family due to focusing more on his inventing and racing careers. But he appreciates and loves them nonetheless. Triplets with Pluto and Eris.

Pluto (19, Male, he/him): Pretty cocky and impulsive. Will always act first and think later, earning him quite a few injuries. Also somewhat antagonistic towards Crusher, but in a brotherly teasing way. Triplets with Crusher and Eris.

Eris (19, Demigirl, she/they): Quieter and weaker compared to her triplet brothers, but also somewhat manipulative and smart. She can use her resources in order to get what she wants when she needs to, but prefers not to most of the time and would rather politely bargain for those wants. Triplets with Crusher and Pluto.

Haumea (23, Female, she/her): The oldest and quietest of Crusher’s siblings. Barely talks at all, but makes up for those words with actions. She’s fiercely protective of all her siblings, especially after an incident the family would rather forget.

Makemake/Keke (2, Female, she/her): The youngest and most adorable of Crusher’s siblings. She’s a cutie and she loves her siblings and family, who also love her. The family is concerned about her lack of hair, but disregard it most of the time.

Middle Row, Left to Right (Crusher’s Cousins)

Leo (6, Male, he/him): The youngest of Crusher’s cousins. Always poking his head into stuff that doesn’t need poking into due to natural curiosity, getting him in trouble far too many times. Easily influenced by his siblings, especially Scorpio, into doing increasingly unsafe things. It’s pretty easy to make sure he doesn’t cause trouble, and all the siblings (aside from Keke of course) as well as Grammy can keep him under control.

Virgo (10, Demiboy/Questioning, he/they): Was influenced by Eris’ gender identity and wanted to imitate her, thus identifying himself as a demiboy. Despite the fact that the family is sure he’ll just go back to identifying as male in the future, they support them nonetheless. More logically grounded than their siblings, and he often has to keep them in check. Though there are times where they will get in on the troublemaking as well.

Libra (8, Female, she/her): The only female of Crusher’s cousins. Loud and bossy, and will use that to get anything she wants, even from Scorpio. She is constantly trying to be the center of attention anytime and all the time and has somewhat toughened up due to her brothers’ antics. The only ones outside of her siblings who can consistently keep her well behaved are Grammy and Haumea.

Scorpio (11, Male, he/him): The oldest and most dominant of Crusher’s cousins. Often the ringleader in the cousins’ troublemaking schemes and likes to target Crusher and his siblings in those schemes. Only Grammy can consistently keep him under control, but that doesn’t mean Pluto hasn’t tried.

Top Row, Grammy (74, Female, she/her). You already know her too. She loves all her grandchildren. That’s it. She gets the label text to herself bc she is a queen and I will fight you if you disagree.

This is all just a concept (that I may or may not write about ;]) so personalities, ages, and all that other fun stuff are all subject to change.

[taiyokei]

How does Pluto feel towards Eris and other dwarf planets?

Ceres- Pluto enjoys her company. She is like his ‘big sis’ whom he goes for advice. Ceres is the one that understands how Pluto feels the most because she too was reclassified a lot.

Eris- Pluto and her have a bit of a complicated relationship. She’s one of the reasons why he got transferred to the Dwarf Planet Club. She is a bit of a tsundere and won’t call Pluto ‘Big Bro’ because she consider them equals. She gets annoyed when Pluto doesn’t speak out what he really feels and it’s most of the time.

Makemake and Haumea- they are the newer members (especially Haumea). Pluto and Makemake get along quite well because they have some similarities in their personality and Makemake calls him ‘BIg Bro’.He runs off the Pluto whenever Haumea teases him. Because of this though, Pluto gets caught in the crossfire and gets teased along.

[semiotexte]

As the years passed, I learned to think of dreams as an integral part of life. There are dreams that, because of their sensory intensity, their realism or precisely their lack of realism, deserve to be introduced into autobiography, just as much as events that were actually lived through. Life begins and ends in the unconscious; the actions we carry out while fully lucid are only little islands in an archipelago of dreams. No existence can be completely rendered in its happiness or its madness without taking into account oneiric experiences. It’s Calderón de la Barca’s maxim reversed: it’s not a matter of thinking that life is a dream, but rather of realizing that dreams are also a form of life. It is just as strange to think, like the Egyptians, that dreams are cosmic channels through which the souls of ancestors pass in order to communicate with us, as to claim, as some of the neurosciences do, that dreams are a “cut-and-paste” of elements experienced by the brain during waking life, elements that return in the dream’s REM phase, while our eyes move beneath our eyelids, as if they were watching. Closed and sleeping, eyes continue to see. Therefore, it is more appropriate to say that the human psyche never stops creating and dealing with reality, sometimes in dreams, sometimes in waking life.

Whereas over the course of the past few months my waking life has been, to use the euphemistic Catalan expression, “good, so long as we don’t go into details,” my oneiric life has had the power of a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. During one of my recent dreams, I was talking with the artist Dominique González-Foerster about my problem of geographic dislocation: after years of a nomadic life, it is hard for me to decide on a place to live in the world. While we were having this conversation, we were watching the planets spin slowly in their orbits, as if we were two giant children and the solar system were a Calder mobile. I was explaining to her that, for now, in order to avoid the conflict that the decision entailed, I had rented an apartment on each planet, but that I didn’t spend more than a month on any one of them, and that this situation was economically and physically unsustainable. Probably because she is the creator of the Exotourisme project, Dominique in this dream was an expert on extraterrestrial real-estate management. “If I were you, I’d have an apartment on Mars and I’d keep a pied-à-terre on Saturn,” she was saying, showing a great deal of pragmatism, “but I’d get rid of the Uranus apartment. It’s much too far away.”

Awake, I don’t know much about astronomy; I don’t have the slightest idea of the positions or distances of the different planets in the solar system. But I consulted the Wikipedia page on Uranus: it is in fact one of the most distant planets from Earth. Only Neptune, Pluto, and the dwarf planets Haumea, Makemake, and Eris are farther away. I read that Uranus was the first planet discovered with the help of a telescope, eight years before the French Revolution. With the help of a lens he himself had made, the astronomer and musician William Herschel observed it one night in March in a clear sky, from the garden of his house at 19 New King Street, in the city of Bath. Since he didn’t yet know if it was a huge star or a tailless comet, they say that Herschel called it “Georgium Sidus,” the Georgian Star, to console King George III for the loss of the British colonies in America: England had lost a continent, but the King had gained a planet. Thanks to Uranus, Herschel was able to live on a generous royal pension of two hundred pounds a year. Because of Uranus, he abandoned both music and the city of Bath, where he was a chapel organist and director of public concerts, and settled in Windsor so that the King could be sure of his new conquest by observing it through a telescope. Because of Uranus, they say, Herschel went mad, and spent the rest of his life building the largest telescope of the eighteenth century, which the English called “the monster.” Because of Uranus, they say, Herschel never played the oboe again. He died at the age of eighty-four: the number of years it takes for Uranus to go around the sun. They say that the tube of his telescope was so wide that the family used it as a dining hall at his funeral.

Uranus is what astrophysicists call a “gas giant.” Made up of ice, methane, and ammonia, it is the coldest planet in the solar system, with winds that can exceed nine hundred kilometers per hour. In short, the living conditions are not especially suitable. So Dominique was right: I should leave the Uranus apartment.

But dream functions like a virus. From that night forward, while I’m awake, the sensation of having an apartment on Uranus increases, and I am more and more convinced that the place I should live is over there.

For the Greeks, as for me in this dream, Uranus was the solid roof of the world, the limit of the celestial vault. Uranus was regarded as the house of the gods in many Greek invocation rituals. In mythology, Uranus is the son that Gaia, the Earth, conceived alone, without insemination or coition. Greek mythology is at once a kind of retro sci-fi story anticipating in a do-it-yourself way the technologies of reproduction and bodily transformation that will appear throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; and at the same time a kitschy TV series in which the characters give themselves over to an unimaginable number of relationships outside the law. Thus Gaia married her son Uranus, a Titan often represented in the middle of a cloud of stars, like a sort of Tom of Finland dancing with other muscle-bound guys in a techno club on Mount Olympus. From the incestuous and ultimately not very heterosexual relationships between heaven and earth, the first generation of Titans were born, including Oceanus (Water), Chronos (Time), and Mnemosyne (Memory) … Uranus was both the son of the Earth and the father of all the others. We don’t quite know what Uranus’s problem was, but the truth is that he was not a good father: either he forced his children to remain in Gaia’s womb, or he threw them into Tartarus as soon as they were born. So Gaia convinced one of her children to carry out a contraceptive operation. You can see in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence the representation that Giorgio Vasari made in the sixteenth century of Chronos castrating his father Uranus with a scythe. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, emerged from Uranus’s amputated genital organs … which could imply that love comes from the disjunction of the body’s genital organs, from the displacement and externalization of genital force.

This form of nonheterosexual conception, cited in Plato’s Symposium, was the inspiration for the German lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs to come up with the word Uranian [Urning] in 1864 to designate what he called relations of the “third sex.” In order to explain men’s attraction to other men, Ulrichs, after Plato, cut subjectivity in half, separated the soul from the body, and imagined a combination of souls and bodies that authorized him to reclaim dignity for those who loved against the law. The segmentation of soul and body reproduces in the domain of experience the binary epistemology of sexual difference: there are only two options. Uranians are not, Ulrich writes, sick or criminal, but feminine souls enclosed in masculine bodies attracted to masculine souls.

This is not a bad idea to legitimize a form of love that, at the time, could get you hanged in England or in Prussia, and that, today, remains illegal in seventy-four countries and is subject to the death penalty in thirteen, including Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, and Qatar; a form of love that constitutes a common motive for violence in family, society, and police in most Western democracies.

Ulrichs does not make this statement as a lawyer or scientist: he is speaking in the first person. He does not say “there are Uranians,” but “I am a Uranian.” He asserts this, in Latin, on August 18, 1867, after having been condemned to prison and after his books have been banned by an assembly of five hundred jurists, members of the German Parliament, and a Bavarian prince—an ideal audience for such confessions. Until then, Ulrichs had hidden behind the pseudonym “Numa Numantius.” But from that day on, he speaks in his own name, he dares to taint the name of his father. In his diary, Ulrichs confesses he was terrified, and that, just before walking onto the stage of the Grand Hall of the Odeon Theater in Munich, he had been thinking about running away, never to return. But he says he suddenly remembered the words of the Swiss writer Heinrich Hössli, who a few years before had defended sodomites (though not, however, speaking in his own name): “Two ways lie before me,” Hössli wrote, “to write this book and expose myself to persecution, or not to write it and be full of guilt until the day I am buried. Of course I have encountered the temptation to stop writing … But before my eyes appeared the images of the persecuted and the wretched prospect of such children who have not yet been born, and I thought of the unhappy mothers at their cradles, rocking their cursed yet innocent children! And then I saw our judges with their eyes blindfolded. Finally, I imagined my gravedigger slipping the cover of my coffin over my cold face. Then, before I submitted, the imperious desire to stand up and defend the oppressed truth possessed me … And so I continued to write with my eyes resolutely averted from those who have worked for my destruction. I do not have to choose between remaining silent or speaking. I say to myself: speak or be judged!”

Ulrichs writes in his journal that the judges and Parliamentarians seated in Munich’s Odeon Hall cried out, as they listened to his speech, like an angry crowd: End the meeting! End the meeting! But he also notes that one or two voices were raised to say: Let him continue! In the midst of a chaotic tumult, the President left the theater, but some Parliamentarians remained. Ulrichs’s voice trembled. They listened.

But what does it mean to speak for those who have been refused access to reason and knowledge, for us who have been regarded as mentally ill? With what voice can we speak? Can the jaguar or the cyborg lend us their voices? To speak is to invent the language of the crossing, to project one’s voice into an interstellar expedition: to translate our difference into the language of the norm; while we continue, in secret, to practice a strange lingo that the law does not understand.

So Ulrichs was the first European citizen to declare publicly that he wanted to have an apartment on Uranus. He was the first mentally ill person, the first sexual criminal to stand up and denounce the categories that labeled him as sexually and criminally diseased.

He did not say, “I am not a sodomite.” On the contrary, he defended the right to practice sodomy between men, calling for a reorganization of the systems of signs, for a change of the political rituals that defined the social recognition of a body as healthy or sick, legal or illegal. He invented a new language and a new scene of enunciation. In each of Ulrichs’s words addressed from Uranus to the Munich jurists resounds the violence generated by the dualist epistemology of the West. The entire universe cut in half and solely in half. Everything is heads or tails in this system of knowledge. We are human or animal. Man or woman. Living or dead. We are the colonizer or the colonized. Living organism or machine. We have been divided by the norm. Cut in half and forced to remain on one side or the other of the rift. What we call “subjectivity” is only the scar that, over the multiplicity of all that we could have been, covers the wound of this fracture. It is over this scar that property, family, and inheritance were founded. Over this scar, names are written and sexual identities asserted.

On May 6, 1868, Karl Maria Kertbeny, an activist and defender of the rights of sexual minorities, sent a handwritten letter to Ulrichs in which for the first time he used the word homosexual to refer to what his friend called “Uranians.” Against the antisodomy law promulgated in Prussia, Kertbeny defended the idea that sexual practices between people of the same sex were as “natural” as the practices of those he calls—also for the first time—“heterosexuals.” For Kertbeny, homosexuality and heterosexuality were just two natural ways of loving. For medical jurisprudence at the end of the nineteenth century, however, homosexuality would be reclassified as a disease, a deviation, and a crime.

I am not speaking of history here. I am speaking to you of your lives, of mine, of today. While the notion of Uranianism has gone somewhat astray in the archives of literature, Kertbeny’s concepts would become authentic biopolitical techniques of dealing with sexuality and reproduction over the course of the twentieth century, to such an extent that most of you continue to use them to refer to your own identity, as if they were descriptive categories. Homosexuality would remain listed until 1975 in Western psychiatric manuals as a sexual disease. This remains a central notion, not only in the discourse of clinical psychology, but also in the political languages of Western democracies.

When the notion of homosexuality disappeared from psychiatric manuals, the notions of intersexuality and transsexuality appear as new pathologies for which medicine, pharmacology, and law suggest remedies. Each body born in a hospital in the West is examined and subjected to the protocols of evaluation of gender normality invented in the fifties in the United States by the doctors John Money and John and Joan Hampson: if the baby’s body does not comply with the visual criteria of sexual difference, it will be submitted to a battery of operations of “sexual reassignment.” In the same way, with a few minor exceptions, neither scientific discourse nor the law in most Western democracies recognizes the possibility of inscribing a body as a member of human society unless it is assigned either masculine or feminine gender. Transsexuality and intersexuality are described as psychosomatic pathologies, and not as the symptoms of the inadequacy of the politico-visual system of sexual differentiation when faced with the complexity of life.

How can you, how can we, organize an entire system of visibility, representation, right of self-determination, and political recognition if we follow such categories? Do you really believe you are male or female, that we are homosexual or heterosexual, intersexed or transsexual? Do these distinctions worry you? Do you trust them? Does the very meaning of your human identity depend on them? If you feel your throat constricting when you hear one of these words, do not silence it. It’s the multiplicity of the cosmos that is trying to pierce through your chest, as if it were the tube of a Herschel telescope.

Let me tell you that homosexuality and heterosexuality do not exist outside of a dualistic, hierarchical epistemology that aims at preserving the domination of the paterfamilias over the reproduction of life. Homosexuality and heterosexuality, intersexuality and transsexuality do not exist outside of a colonial, capitalist epistemology, which privileges the sexual practices of reproduction as a strategy for managing the population and the reproduction of labor, but also the reproduction of the population of consumers. It is capital, not life, that is being reproduced. These categories are the map imposed by authority, not the territory of life. But if homosexuality and heterosexuality, intersexuality and transsexuality, do not exist, then who are we? How do we love? Imagine it.

Then, I remember my dream and I understand that my trans condition is a new form of Uranism. I am not a man and I am not a woman and I am not heterosexual I am not homosexual I am not bisexual. I am a dissident of the sex-gender system. I am the multiplicity of the cosmos trapped in a binary political and epistemological system, shouting in front of you. I am a Uranian confined inside the limits of techno-scientific capitalism.

Like Ulrichs, I am bringing no news from the margins; instead, I bring you a piece of horizon. I come with news of Uranus, which is neither the realm of God nor the sewer. Quite the contrary. I was assigned a female sex at birth. They said I was lesbian. I decided to self-administer regular doses of testosterone. I never thought I was a man. I never thought I was a woman. I was several. I didn’t think of myself as transsexual. I wanted to experiment with testosterone. I love its viscosity, the unpredictability of the changes it causes, the intensity of the emotions it provokes forty-eight hours after taking it. And, if the injections are regular, its ability to undo your identity, to make organic layers of the body emerge that otherwise would have remained invisible. Here as everywhere, what matters is the measure: the dosage, the rhythm of injections, the order of them, the cadence. I wanted to become unrecognizable. I wasn’t asking medical institutions for testosterone as hormone therapy to cure “gender dysphoria.” I wanted to function with testosterone, to experience the intensity of my desire through it, to multiply my faces by metamorphosing my subjectivity, creating a body that was a revolutionary machine. I undid the mask of femininity that society had plastered onto my face until my identity documents became ridiculous, obsolete. Then, with no way out, I agreed to identify myself as a transsexual, as a “mentally ill person,” so that the medico-legal system would acknowledge me as a living human body. I paid with my body for the name I bear.

By making the decision to construct my subjectivity with testosterone, the way the shaman constructs his with plants, I take on the negativity of my time, a negativity I am forced to represent and against which I can fight only from this paradoxical incarnation, which is to be a trans man in the twenty-first century, a feminist bearing the name of a man in the #MeToo movement, an atheist of the hetero-patriarchal system turned into a consumer of the pharmacopornographic industry. My existence as a trans man constitutes at once the acme of the sexual ancien régime and the beginning of its collapse, the climax of its normative progression and the signal of a proliferation still to come.

I have come to talk to you—to you and to the dead, or rather, to those who live as if they were already dead—but I have come especially to talk to the cursed, innocent children who are yet to be born. Uranians are the survivors of a systematic, political attempt at infanticide: we have survived the attempt to kill in us, while we were not yet adults, and while we could not defend ourselves, the radical multiplicity of life and the desire to change the names of all things. Are you dead? Will they be born tomorrow? I congratulate you, belatedly or in advance.

I bring you news of the crossing, which is the realm of neither God nor the sewer. Quite the contrary. Do not be afraid, do not be excited, I have not come to explain anything morbid. I have not come to tell you what a transsexual is, or how to change your sex, or at what precise instant a transition is good or bad. Because none of that would be true, no truer than the ray of afternoon sun falling on a certain spot on the planet and changing according to the place from which it is seen. No truer than that the slow orbit described by Uranus as it revolves above the Earth is yellow. I cannot tell you everything that goes on when you take testosterone, or what that does in your body. Take the trouble to administer the necessary doses of knowledge to yourself, as many as your taste for risk allows you.

I have not come for that. As my indigenous Chilean mother Pedro Lemebel said, I do not know why I come, but I am here. In this Uranian apartment that overlooks the gardens of Athens. And I’ll stay a while. At the crossroads. Because intersection is the only place that exists. There are no opposite shores. We are always at the crossing of paths. And it is from this crossroad that I address you, like the monster who has learned the language of humans.

I no longer need, like Ulrichs, to assert that I am a masculine soul enclosed in a woman’s body. I have no soul and no body. I have an apartment on Uranus, which certainly places me far from most earthlings, but not so far that you can’t come see me. Even if only in dream …

[downbythebaynotbae]

It makes me so sad that people don’t know about dwarf planets. Especially people my age who were so effected by Pluto’s planet status being taken away.

We don’t just have the eight planets. We have multiple dwarf planets, Pluto being one of them.

We currently have FIVE dwarf planets: Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Ceres, and Pluto.

They’re relatively newly found or classified. But they believe that we have many dwarf planets that we haven’t discovered yet.

So yes we have 8 main planets with a mysterious 9th one hidden out there somewhere but we also have 5 dwarf planets that need love

[mutatedfish]

hey can you explain to me the pluto leftist post? i'm dumb but genuinely curious

i sure can! the post itself was essentially a joke, but it requires some explanation hshdhshd so.

an (abridged) explanation of the pluto timeline is basically. scientists discover pluto, they count it as a planet because why not and they hadn't found anything else from the kuiper belt yet, years later they discover other celestial bodies and have to reclassify pluto.

pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet by the iau (international astronomical union) in 2006 because scientists had found other celestial bodies that were close in size to pluto, meaning that they would either have to change pluto's status or add the other bodies to the list of planets. the iau ended up coming up with official criteria for a planet (they didn't actually have any beforehand. they just kinda pointed at things and were like "y'know what? that's a planet" and everyone else was like "alrighty!") and creating a new category: dwarf planets. there are five official dwarf planets in our solar system (pluto, eris, haumea, makemake, and ceres) and probably more but the iau hasn't done anything about them.

so. the criteria for what qualifies a body to be a planet is kinda Wonky. and this invites debate about whether or not pluto should be reclassified as a planet and, if so, should the other dwarf planets be counted as planets? what about the rest of the kuiper belt? hell, what are we gonna do when we find planet x? all these questions and more will be answered When We Get To It i guess. but i digress.

essentially my issue is that there is debate over pluto's inclusion as a planet and that debate is valid! but generally only when it's informed and people on both sides understand the context around pluto's situation. generally i think when people, especially on tumblr, include pluto as a planet they're doing it because they grew up with pluto as the 9th planet, they think it was a form of demotion or rejection, or they're emotionally attached to pluto. it's not irrational reasoning, but it lacks a lot of the information that i feel like the pluto debate needs.

tl;dr is that pluto is not a planet and while saying it is isn't an unreasonable opinion, it's usually misguided and still is technically just an opinion. thank you for reading my post though, i mostly made it bc i thought it was funny and didn't realize other people would pog at it hshshdhd

[hereticaloracles]

TNO Watch: Eris

Helios on Eris– So, somehow in my accounting of the Transneptunians, I managed to overlook the biggest, most prolific of them all (however not the first to be discovered past Pluto!)- Eris! Now I can’t rightly finish off the archive without her, now can I? So without further ado, let me formally welcome back the most controversial dwarf planet back into the party! Gird your loins, y’all

The Astronomy– Eris is the most massive and second-largest (by volume) dwarf planet (and plutoid) known in the Solar System. Eris was discovered in January 2005, and in September 2006 it was named after Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and discord. Eris is the ninth most massive object directly orbiting the Sun, and the 16th most massive overall, because seven moons are more massive than all known dwarf planets. It is also the largest which has not yet been visited by a spacecraft. Eris was measured to be 2,326 ± 12 kilometers (1,445.3 ± 7.5 mi) in diameter. Eris’s mass is about 0.27% of the Earth mass, about 27% more than dwarf planet Pluto, although Pluto is slightly larger by volume.

Eris is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) and a member of a high-eccentricity population known as the scattered disk. It has one known moon, Dysnomia. As of February 2016, its distance from the Sun was 96.3 astronomical units (1.441×1010 km; 8.95×109 mi), roughly three times that of Pluto. With the exception of some long-period comets, until 2018 VG18 was discovered on December 17, 2018, Eris and Dysnomia were the most distant known natural objects in the Solar System.[

Because Eris appeared to be larger than Pluto, NASA initially described it as the Solar System’s tenth planet. This, along with the prospect of other objects of similar size being discovered in the future, motivated the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term planet for the first time. Under the IAU definition approved on August 24, 2006, Eris is a “dwarf planet”, along with objects such as Pluto, Ceres, Haumea and Makemake thereby reducing the number of known planets in the Solar System to eight, the same as before Pluto’s discovery in 1930. Observations of a stellar occultation by Eris in 2010 showed that its diameter was 2,326 ± 12 kilometers (1,445.3 ± 7.5 mi), very slightly less than Pluto, which was measured by New Horizons in July 2015.

The Myth– Eris is the Greek goddess of strife and discord. The most famous tale of Eris recounts her initiating the Trojan War by causing the Judgement of Paris. The goddesses Hera, Athena and Aphrodite had been invited along with the rest of Olympus to the forced wedding of Peleus and Thetis, who would become the parents of Achilles, but Eris had been snubbed because of her troublemaking inclinations.

She, therefore (as mentioned at the Kypria according to Proclus as part of a plan hatched by Zeus and Themis) tossed into the party the Apple of Discord, a golden apple inscribed Ancient Greek: τῇ καλλίστῃ, “For the most beautiful one”, or “To the Fairest One” – provoking the goddesses to begin quarreling about the appropriate recipient. The hapless Paris, Prince of Troy, was appointed to select the fairest by Zeus. The goddesses stripped naked to try to win Paris’s decision and also attempted to bribe him. Hera offered political power; Athena promised infinite wisdom; and Aphrodite tempted him with the most beautiful woman in the world: Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta. While Greek culture placed a greater emphasis on prowess and power, Paris chose to award the apple to Aphrodite, thereby dooming his city, which was destroyed in the war that ensued.

Another story of Eris includes Hera and the love of Polytekhnos and Aedon. They claimed to love each other more than Hera and Zeus were in love. This angered Hera, so she sent Eris to wreak discord upon them. Polytekhnos was finishing off a chariot board, and Aedon a web she had been weaving. Eris said to them, “Whosoever finishes thine task last shall have to present the other with a female servant!” Aedon won. But Polytekhnos was not happy by his defeat, so he came to Khelidon, Aedon’s sister, and raped her. He then disguised her as a slave, presenting her to Aedon. When Aedon discovered this was indeed her sister, she chopped up Polytekhnos’s son and fed him to Polytekhnos. The gods were not pleased, so they turned them all into birds.

Eris has been adopted as the patron deity of the modern Discordian religion, which was begun in the late 1950s by Gregory Hill and Kerry Wendell Thornley under the pen names of “Malaclypse the Younger” and “Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst”. The Discordian version of Eris is considerably lighter in comparison to the rather malevolent Graeco-Roman original, wherein she is depicted as a positive (albeit mischievous) force of chaotic creation.

A quote from the Principia Discordia, the first holy book of Discordianism, attempts to clear up the matter: One day Mal-2 consulted his Pineal Gland and asked Eris if She really created all of those terrible things. She told him that She had always liked the Old Greeks, but that they cannot be trusted with historical matters. “They were,” She added, “victims of indigestion, you know.” Suffice it to say that Eris is not hateful or malicious. But she is mischievous and does get a little bitchy at times.

The story of Eris being snubbed and indirectly starting the Trojan War is recorded in the Principia and is referred to as the Original Snub. The Principia Discordia states that her parents may be as described in Greek legend, or that she may be the daughter of Void. She is the Goddess of Disorder and Being, whereas her sister Aneris (called the equivalent of Harmonia by the Mythics of Harmonia) is the goddess of Order and Non-Being. Their brother is Spirituality.

Discordian Eris is looked upon as a foil to the preoccupation of western philosophy in attempting to find order in the chaos of reality, in prescribing order to be synonymous with truth. Discordian Eris teaches us that the only truth is chaos and that order and disorder are simply temporary filters applied to the lenses through which we view the chaos. This is known as the Aneristic Illusion.

Why She Matters– Okay, its no secret that Eris is fantastic and I love her. Yes, Eris is chaos, but you know what? So is life. You can try and plan and make things nice and neat, but then the Universe comes through like a toddler who just learned how to walk, hellbent on getting to the other side of the room- consequences be damned. Eris is that universal action. Make no mistake, she is a destroyer and lives for the battlefield, but she also loves to dance, finding the beat in the deaths of men clamoring to prove that they are right to unseen forces (but most of all, themselves). If Mars ever did drag, she would look like Eris (and you bet your ass there would be death drops and shablams like you’ve never seen before!)

When people (read: hecklers) try to come at me with proof that astrology works (but who don’t have their birth time handy for me to utterly eviscerate them) I point to Eris. I remember when she was discovered, and the excitement that her unveiling brought to all of us. And then I remember, quite vividly, the fallout from the IAU decision after she was named but then relegated to dwarf planet status. It was a repeat of the Judgement of Paris myth! She was snubbed, yet again, by the authority, and Pluto was caught up in the fallout as collateral damage just because she was bigger than him (men and size issues, amirite?). And the authority paid for it in the end! Even total luddites who don’t follow the whirling and twirling of the planets (dwarf or otherwise) have a strong opinion about the decision. It made people care about these crazy space rocks, which brings me great happiness.

We aren’t all running around fighting all the time in this modern age, so how do we look at Eris now? A primal force of chaos doesn’t really mesh with our modern sensibilities- or does it? One of the more enlightening views on Eris comes when we consider her in terms of Justice, especially against any kind of oppressive authority. This can be seen in almost every major social movement to demand better treatment, to deny an oppressive ruling class its ability to exploit those below it- Stonewall, May Day, Ferguson, Rodney King, The Arab Spring…. Hell, even the Boston Tea Party! Eris is that urge we feel to stand our ground and refuse to roll over to the bad guys. Eris is the urge to fight for our rights. Yes, it can get violent- but better short violence that changes things for the better than the long, slow violence of inaction. Far better to live boldly and bravely. More commonly though, Eris spurs us on to fight with our racist uncles on Facebook or send petty gifs in the group chats calling out our friends for being slutty… but like, in an endearing way. In fact you could solidly call Eris the Goddess of Shade. Hey, not every action can be a revolutionary one after all- sometimes you just want to get brunch with your girls.

Eris isnt just Chaos, by the way- she also represents Strife. More specifically, what you are striving for. What do you want out of this life? If you are lost, look to Eris and she can help you find your way when you’ve lost it. Mind you, you’ll be in for a HELL of a trip with her (more Thelma and Louise than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas- That’s solidly Arawn territory) and you might not survive, but at least you’ll know!

Now, we all have all of these planets and asteroids SOMEWHERE in our chart, so in you is the seed of chaos- even the most holier-than-thou Libra. As with all of the Transneptunians, look at her house placement, not necessarily the sign, to see her effect. To find out where she shows up in your chart, go to astro.com, put in your birth details and in the extended options, all the way at the bottom of the next page, there will be a menu of additional objects. Under that is a blank space where you can enter the number 136199, for Eris. Once you have it entered, generate the chart! Where does Eris affect your life? Let us know in the comments below!

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TNO Watch: Eris was originally published on Heretical Oracles

[bodiesoflightyogaandastrology]

Happy New Moon in Beautiful Justice-For-All Libra🌟This New Moon now quickly goes into a Void of Course Hiding Chamber to emerge in a few hours as Scorpio!🌟In the Dreamtime the Libra New Moon Sets Intention to merge her Fairness with Scorpio’s Intense Mystery of Resurrection🌟She and the Libra Sun are opposite Warrioress Eris and Mars RX in Aries🌟All are in a Life-Changing T-Square Mission with Saturn & Pluto in Capricorn🌟The Pot is Boiling, and Libra Season’s Sense of Balance and Intelligent Negotiation is Needed🌟Her Secret Weapon is her Lunar Merger with Scorpio, giving her the Ability to Rise from the Ashes of Collective Confusion and Chaos🌟She comes out of her Void of Course Revery soon after Clear-Headed and Ready to Initiate Action🌟Her First Item of Agenda is Getting Clear on Any and All Relationships, Especially her Relationship with Herself and the Divine Light🌟Mercury RX in Scorpio is continuing to hold her hand in a 3-week Personal Excavation of Old Lies, Old Stories, & Old Go-Nowhere Scenario🌟That stuff can now be relinquished to Open to New Possibilities (Lightening Bolt Downloads from Mercury opposite Uranus in Earthy Taurus) as we move through the remainder of 2020🌟Beneficial Mystical Light shines on this New Moon Lunation from the 3rd Jupiter in Capricorn-Neptune in Pisces sextile this year🌟Another Silver Lining is Venus in Virgo trine Jupiter, though her opposition to Neptune asks that you make sure that Diamond is Real🌟Neptune sextile Pluto is casting a Rare Long-Term Collective Spell of Mystical Transformation for the Highest Good🌟This is about a Collective Surrender to Mother Nature’s Plan as we see by the New Moon being framed by both Haumea (Divine Feminine Earth Goddess) and MakeMake (Divine Masculine Earth God) in Libra🌟Balance, Justice and Clean Air for All are the New Moon in Libra Messages for this time🌟DM for Readings, Cards & Energy Clearing🌟#astrology #newmooninlibra (at China Cove Beach) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGa-4uWHLpq/?igshid=viuhkl76mn1y

[davidmkelly]

New Post has been published on David M. Kelly

New Post has been published on https://davidmkelly.net/2018/11/08/are-we-there-yet-or-why-the-moon-is-closer-than-toronto/

Are we there yet? (Or why the Moon is closer than Toronto!)

When I was younger on family vacations with my siblings, you could guarantee that within an hour of setting off, we’d be chorusing the phrase “Are we there yet?” much to the annoyance of our parents. They’d do their best to keep us occupied, making up games along the way, and we’d always have a few books with us. A far cry from the mobile entertainment we have now! My dad, always the joker, would tease us, asking if we could smell the sea yet (or claiming that he could) or see Blackpool Tower, or some other landmark at our destination.

Now I live in Ontario, Canada–a province far larger than England–where distances are so large that we talk about them in terms of time, rather than a number of kilometers.

So, where I live is, for example, five hours north of Toronto. We’re also two hours west of North Bay, and Ottawa is about five hours east. Of course, the travel speeds vary depending on traffic, (and how far someone is willing to risk getting a ticket!), but these averages work well for most people to get a feel for how far somewhere is.

So, how does distance in space measure up?

Let’s channel our inner Carl Sagan–or Neil deGrasse Tyson–and imagine we have a spaceship that can take us anywhere we want. We need to be comfortable during the journey, so let’s say that this spaceship can accelerate at one g (1g). This is the rate of gravity we feel here on earth, and what our bodies are accustomed to dealing with. In low g environments such as the ISS, astronauts have to be careful of problems such as muscle wasting and bone loss over long time periods, so we want to avoid that.

So we have a ship that can accelerate at a constant one g, all the way to our destination. Of course we want to stop when we get there so we can look around, buy postcards, check out the local nightlife etc. Which means we also have to slow down, so we don’t just zip straight past our destination. To do that and still keep our 1g acceleration-induced pseudo-gravity, we need to decelerate at the same rate. So, what we end up doing is accelerate for half the distance, then decelerate for half the distance. Like this:

This will get us to our destination in comfort, then we don’t need to worry about things like being too weak to party when we get to the Martian nightclubs, or failing to harvest all that kelp in the oceans of Jupiter…

So how long would it take to get places?

Well, the moon is approximately 360,000 km away.  So, if we calculate the acceleration and travel time, we get a travel time of just over three hours. Wow, the moon is closer than Toronto!

Interesting too, looking at the velocity at the midpoint, our ship would reach an impressive speed of over 213,000 km/h. That’s traveling at a fair old clip for sure.

Let’s see. How about Mars? That’s where everybody wants to go, isn’t it? Well, Mars is roughly 56 million km, so at a constant 1g acceleration and deceleration, the journey would take 41 hours, or about 1.75 days. Not exactly a quick run down to the local store, but manageable. The midpoint speed would be around 2.6 million km/h, certainly fast enough to satisfy any speed junkie (even me!)

So, how do the other planets measure up on this scale? Well let’s see:

Mercury is about 91 million km away. The travel time would take 2.25 days, with a maximum velocity of 3.4 million km/h. Venus is 41.8 million km, which would give us a travel time of 1.5 days, with a top speed of 2.3 million km/h. Here’s a list of all the planets (see my definition of a planet):

Name Distance (million km) Travel Time (Days) Highest Vel (million km/h) Mercury 91 2.25 3.4 Venus 41.8 1.5 2.3 Earth – – – Mars 56 1.75 2.6 Ceres (Asteroid Belt) 264.8 3.8 5.8 Jupiter 591 5.7 8.6 Saturn 1197 8 12.3 Uranus 2586 11.9 181 Pluto (Kuiper Belt) 4685 16 24.3 Haumea (Kuiper Belt) 6484 18.8 28.6 Makemake (Kuiper Belt) 6850 19.3 29.5 Eris (Kuiper Belt) 10210 23.6 35.9

None of the figures there look beyond the realms of possibility for a bunch of intrepid explorers, do they? Even Pluto is only 16 days away by these terms, and Eris, the furthest planet we know of in our solar system, is just over three weeks away. Pretty “close” when you consider the average time for people to cross the Atlantic in the 1700s was about 7 weeks.

The speed or velocity at the midpoint for these journeys looks impressive. For Eris, at a distance of over ten billion kilometers, the highest speed reached is a staggering thirty-six million km/h! This compares with the New Horizons probe (the fastest so far launched) which had a heliocentric (Sun-relative) velocity of “just” 162000km/h–less than 200th of the calculated Eris journey top speed. Also, to give another perspective, this is “only” three percent of the speed of light.

So why don’t we all start hopping about the Solar System at will? Well the elephant in this particular room is fuel. A rocket has to carry all of its supplies, including fuel (plus atmosphere and food for a crewed ship) on-board. If we could create a fusion engine, turning Hydrogen into Helium with near perfect conversion of energy to propulsion, a 25 tonne spaceship would require 215 tonnes of fuel to make the journey, and as yet we haven’t succeeded in creating any kind of sustained nuclear fusion reaction. If we assume a more practical fuel conversion of perhaps half that, the amount of fuel for the same ship would jump to 431 tonnes. And at current possible technologies, the fuel conversion rate amount would be closer to 1% of that, leaving a spaceship that requires over 21500 tonnes of fuel. Plus if it was chemical rocket powered we’d need approximately twice as much oxidizer to burn the fuel, adding another 49000 tonnes. This would mean the ship would be well over 99% fuel and oxidizer.

Perhaps that could be done. The whole thing would need to be built in orbit, and would certainly strain our resourcefulness but it would be an incredible sight and a fantastic achievement. Imagine the visuals as the first astronauts send back video of their first steps on Pluto or Eris. They’d be genuine heroes. Especially as we just sent them to their deaths… we didn’t allow for any fuel to get them back! If we don’t want a glorious sacrifice, we’re looking at nearly 45000 tonnes of fuel and over 10000 tonnes of oxidizer.

What happens if we look further out? The nearest star system to us, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away. Using the same figures as above, this would mean that the crew’s travel time would be 5.9 years, as measured on earth. Though because of relativistic time dilation, their elapsed time would seem to be just 3.56 years. The speed reached in the midpoint of such a journey would be 95% of the speed of light, and at this speed the ship and crew would shorten to about one third their usual length, before contracting to normal length on arrival. Fuel required would be 12 million tonnes, with 27 million tonnes of oxidizer–for a one-way journey.

This is one of the things that makes writing realistic science fiction so challenging. In my Joe Ballen series, I imagine a couple of technology breakthroughs to help, which allows the ships in those books to accelerate at 0.3g almost constantly, the trick being that they use Casimir-effect (Zero-point energy fields) to create energy out of virtual particles. This eliminates the need for the fuel, but will only work in outer space–the reactors won’t function in an atmosphere and so are useless for landing and taking off from earth. So Joe, Dollie, and Logan can move around most of the solar system in a few months, but that’s as quick as they can get using “normal” engines.

As my dad might have said, “Can you smell the green cheese yet?” 😉