The Tenth Planet Shrinks Under Hubble's Gaze

starexplorer2001 writes "An object called the 10th planet by some astronomers is not as large as previously thought. New images of 2003 UB313 (aka Xena) were delivered by the Hubble Telescope and showed up as only 1.5 pixels! Now, some are calling to demote Pluto and kill Xena."

Blast!

[bl4nk]

This has to be another sinister plot by Aries! Xena should have killed him when she had the chance!

Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's all black except for a bright white spot.

Re:Maybe...

[SlowMovingTarget]

EEEEEeeeeeewwwww... A zit so big Hubble could see it...

"...not as large as previously thought."

[core plexus]

"I swear it's a foot long, it just shrank because of the cold of space!" --

New Face discovered on Mars [suvalleynews.com]

Anyone care to...

[mrjb]

...post a link to the image?

Re:Only 68 miles bigger

[RLiegh]

As George Carlin said pollution; Earth will be fine. We might be fucked; but the earth will be A-OK.

Re:Xena

[Black Copter Control]

Forget Xena, the planet should be named Marvin.

No. George. It started a war with an inflated estimate.

The Plan

[suv4x4]

NASA secretly discovers disturbing facts about the nature of the tenth planet, and decides the news is too shocking for the wide audience. A plan is created to announce the news in several manageable bites:

1. tenth planet not as big as previously thougth, it's more like a small planet, but hey it's a still a friggin 10-th planet, right!

2. tenth planet not a planet as previously thougth, it's more like a moon of Pluto.. but it's still a friggin planet, if not THE 10-th planet...

3. new moon not really a moon, turns out it's more like a really big meteor, so big, it's kinda as big as a moon, almost, but not exactly...

4. big meteor kinda smaller than big, more like, medium meteor, still there though! xena, the medium meteor!! Yei!

5. ok maybe it's not that of a medium, more like a small meteor, little warrior meteor thingy.

6. hey what did you know! that little meteor thingy noone really friggin cares about, was a smudge on the Hubble lens system! huh, sh*t happens, but it's not like we confused it to be the 10-th planet in the Solar system, I mean, cut us some slack, come on :)

7. hey watch us drink cola in zero gravity. wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble!! lol!

no need!

[Quadraginta]

Here's a copy of the image itself:

.

Don't forget it's a reversed (negative) image, so Xena itself is dark and the background of space is white.

I think if you look very closely you can see a few faint stars in the background...

Re:Kill Xena...

[slashdotmsiriv]

" "...kill Xena"

I thought network television did that..."

You are wrong, she came back as a Cylon ...

Re:Stupid name

[stunt_penguin]

That said, I'm sure Nike (the sportswear makers) wouldn't mind having the planet named Nike. They can probably use it in an advertising campaign or something. Also, quasi-planet Nike would be around for much longer than sportswear-Nike. Nothing lasts forever.

Wrong end?

[ozmanjusri]

The Tenth Planet Shrinks Under Hubble's Gaze

I bet they're looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope. If they turn Hubble around, that thing'll turn out to be HUGE!

Re:atomic?

[StarkRG]

Hey, as long as we're applying units to measurements of a different type why not measure it in feet/sec, or perhaps in watts? volts? degrees kelvin? how about in hours?

It's five hours big.

It's not tiny...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just "small boned".

Re:Blast!

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time, will he come as Ars?

Re:Wrong end?

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly Hubble's butt [smv.org] doesn't look nearly as exciting as Xena's. [tripod.com]

Give it to the Investigators at CSI

[aplusjimages]

According to the TV show CSI, they can take that pixel increase the image size and then enhance it enough to make out all the different geographical terrian on the planet/object in space. I tried it in Photoshop and it just doesn't work.

maybe....

[solstice680]

Tenth Planet Shrinks under Hubble's Gaze

Maybe it's because Hubble giggled...

Re:misunderstanding?

[Digital Vomit]

Do you guys know the concept of "resizing a ditital image"?

No. Does it have something to do with enlarging a thumbnail image of breasts?

Just click on it instead, buddy. Chances are it goes to a full size picture.

Re:Stupid name

[CptNerd]

I dunno, I'm kinda hoping for the "Fons".

(thumbs out) Ayyyyy!

Re:no need!

[nytes]

The red ones are just moving away from you very quickly.

You need to move your head towards you monitor very fast. That will counteract the red-shift.

Re:Only 68 miles bigger

[Citizen of Earth]

Still I like my planet the temperature it is now, not severely hotter or colder.

Being a resident of inland Canada, I ask the global community to keep polluting! Milder winters, earlier spring, it's not so bad.

Re:no need!

[ArsonSmith]

I tried it now I'm dizzy and the red-shift is sort of dripping down the front of my monitor.

Erm, no.

[Just Some Guy]

Alemonia

...the Roman goddess of bleeding men dry. I'm not divorced, but I think my less fortunate brethren might want to skip over this one.

Re:Stupid name

[fbg111]

Ah, should have named it Xenu. We could have had a great joke at Scientology's expense...