Frederick Clapp age 11, of Wichita, Kansas,
What is a satellite?
Not so very long ago, we heard that little Pluto was a satellite, We had thought of him as the junior member of our planet family, So naturally this came as a blow,, Andy's readers from all over protested Indignantly. and rightly so, It a plant can be demoted to a satellites as most anything can happen. After all, little Pluto pedals bravely around tits own orbit at a distance from the warm sun of over 300 million miles
The dispute soon died down and Pluto is nor recognized as a planet. one good thing came of the discussion. We all wanted to find out what a satellite is arid how it is different from a star or a planet„ Our $un is starour earth is a planet and our moon is a satellite, Sure are blazing atomic furnaces pouring forth radiant energy, heat and light: in all directions day and night. Planets, asteroids, gamete and meteors. are cool bodies of solid matter. They give off no heat and light of their own but enjoy only the radiant energy of their parent sun,
The sun is vastly different from the other members of our Solar System, But it is not so easy to tell a planet from a satellite. Perhaps it is a matter of size, The planet earth is four times as big as its satellite moon, But all planets are. not bigger than all moons, Mercury, closest to the sun. is our smallest planet, Giant Jupiter has a couple of moons larger than Mercury, one of them may be almost as big as Pluto„ So we cannot tell a satellite from a planet on the basis of size,
Perhaps we can tell by the presence of an atmosphere, After all. our earth has an atmosphere and our moon has none, This generally holds true with planets and satellites, but not always. One of Jupiter's moons has an atmosphere and the planet Mercury has none.
Lets give up guessing and look for a clue in the word satellite. It comes from a Latin word meaning an attendant„ Who or what does our moon attend? The earth, of course. The word attendant sounds like a royal page or a lady‑in‑waiting, And the moon goes around the earth‑like a royal attendant always attendant always keeping her face towards the queen,
A satellite is always a captive of a planet. It is held so far and m farther by gravity and centrifugal force, It must travel around the planet at just the right speedy If it goes too slows it loses centrifugal force and may be pulled down by the gravity of the planet. If it travels too fasts it may whip up enough centrifugal force to pull away from the planet s gravity, In this case it would go floating off into space on its own.
This,, they tell use may well have happened to the planet Pluto: At one times it may have been a sizeable moon in captivity to the large planet Neptune. Somehow, this big moon managed to break qway from its planet, It went off into space all by itself. But the parent of the Solar System refused to let it leave the family altogether. Wandering Pluto felt the pull'. of gravity from the giant sun. This pulled it into an orbit of its own around the sun.
When this happened Pluto graduated to a planet. For a planet moves in a single ring around the sun. A satellite also moves around the sun. But moves along with a planet. As it goes. it makes its own orbits around its planets Our satellite moon makes about thirteen curlicues around the earth while both of them make one big ring around the sun,