Featured Speaker Dr. Gerard van Belle: The Pluto Vote

The 2006 vote on the planetary status of Pluto has had a long-lasting reverberation throughout astronomy. With an outcome that remains controversial both in the public eye and within the professional community, the debate on what to call this world remains a lively one. Dr. van Belle?s own accidental involvement in this question has its own amusing tall tale, which he will recount along the way to re-examining a question: What is a planet, and why do we care?