Imagine looking up at the night sky and seeing a pair of bright stars. When sunrise comes, you see not one, but two suns rising on the horizon. That's what the residents of the planet of star system HD 98800 would see if it ever forms and bears life.

Using the Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists observed the star system 150 light years away. What they know about the system is that it is made of two pairs of stars. Two stars circling each other make one pair, and then that pair is circling around another pair. The two pairs of twins are only a bit farther than how the Earth is as far from Pluto.

They also know that circling one of the pairs of stars are two pairs of dust rings. The first ring is made up of dust grains and sits away from the twin suns as much as the Earth is from the Sun. The second ring is about four times farther than that, and is made up of larger material like asteroids or comets.

Scientists now believe that the empty space between the rings may be the path of a newly forming planet. Elise Furlan of NASA describes it this way: "Planets are like cosmic vacuums. They clear up all the dirt that is in their path around the central stars." It won't be easy to see a planet as a massive cosmic dust bunny, but that's essentially what it is. She also relates how life may be able to exist on planet dust bunny as long as the star system has a stable orbit.

It looks like the best chances for the Solar System to produce life other than on the planet Earth isn't on a planet at all, but a moon. What makes it more interesting is that it's not just on any moon, but on Charon, the moon of our very own ex-planet, Pluto.

Scientists down at Hawaii's Gemini Telescope have discovered patches of ice crystals mixed with ammonia hydrates on the surface of Charon. Researchers, ruling out many theories on how the ice got there, concluded that the ice came from inside Charon itself, seeping out of cracks from the surface.

The process is known as cryo-volcanism, where liquid from below erupts to the surface and instantly freezes. Scientists believe that the cryo-volcanism in Charon is the result of a nuclear material inside it, causing the phenomenon. They also believe the ammonia hydrates acts as an antifreeze agent. Jason Cook, who led the research team that studied Charon's surface, explains:

Charon's surface is almost entirely water ice. So it must have a vast amount of water under the surface, and much of that should be frozen as well. Only deep inside Charon could water be a liquid. Yet, there is fresh ice on the surface, meaning that some liquid water must somehow reach the surface. The ammonia sitting on the surface provides the clue. It's the ammonia that helps keep some material liquid. It makes it all feasible. Without ammonia the water could not get out there.

Scientists are now speculating that Charon may hold life in her underbelly, with alien fish swimming its underground waters. The nuclear reactions would make this possible inside Charon, but the surface is a different matter, as it is far too cold (around -230 degrees Celsius.) It's funny to think that Pluto was named after the Roman god of the underworld, and Charon was the ferryman who took the dead to the underworld.

NASA's New Horizons probe, currently on the way to Pluto, will help scientists investigate Charon further when the probe arrives in July, 2015 to take a closer look and find more evidence.

And this just in from the space watching community: Pluto might be experiencing a really bad 21st Century, as the dwarf planet may not actually be even the largest dwarf planet as was originally presumed. Eris, a large rocky body within the Kuiper Belt, was found to be 100 kilometers wider in diameter, but was assumed to be less dense than Pluto.

Michael Brown, the original discoverer of Eris, along with Emily Schaller, both from the California Institute of Technology, also discovered that Eris is 16.6 billion trillion kilograms. Their estimate was derived from an observation of the body's satellite orbit through the Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory.

Just last year, Pluto was demoted to what the International Astronomical Union called a dwarf planet, which in their eyes can't qualify as a true planet. People who've had a soft side for the former ninth celestial body of our solar system took this news for disappointment. And this new development may dampen their spirits even more.

But Frank Bertoldi of the University of Bonn in Germany believes that not everyone was fazed by the IAU's decision. "The schoolkids still like Pluto whether it's a minor planet, a dwarf planet, or a planet. Pluto is Pluto, and it will stay out there no matter what we call it," he said.

Bertoldi is sure that Eris will not be able to hold it's current crown as the largest dwarf planet in our solar system. There are other portions of the Kuiper Belt that haven't been explored, according to Bertoldi, and it's possible a larger one is hidden within its mysterious ring.

Wired News reports that Pluto might still be considered a planet, at least in New Mexico. State lawmakers will vote on the resolution, House Joint Memorial 54 introduced by Rep. Joni Marie Gutierrez (D-Dona Ana County), that reiterates the importance of astronomy to the state of New Mexico.

The bill proposes that as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico's excellent night skies, it be declared a planet. It also proposes that March 13 be Pluto Planet Day. It's also a bit more than just plain Pluto-love though. The resolution also highlights that in 1930 Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, comes from the county Gutierrez represents. Gutierrez says:

We always took a lot of pride in the fact that he discovered Pluto. ...When they declared it a dwarf planet, we took it as a personal affront, so I envisioned that when then legislative session started, I would propose that at least in New Mexico, Pluto still be considered a planet.

We've said before that science was all about burning old text-books and change, if New Mexico's bill is to be taken as an example, perhaps sometimes we can put science aside, and learn to cherish discoveries, discoverers, and the meaning of things and concepts to people.

The Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft will cut its travel time to the distant dwarf planet by five years thanks to a 9,000mph boost that it will get from Jupiter's gravitational field.

The spacecraft will enter the giant planet's jurisdiction on February 26. There will be no wasted time in this detour as New Horizons will make about 700 observations of Jupiter's hostile atmosphere and take photographs of its ring system. The smaller Red Spot found in the planet will also get its first close look. Before it leaves, the moons of the gas planet will also be studied.

Dr. Robert Furquhar explained that the boost is known as a gravity assist maneuver. What it does essentially is that the piano-sized space probe will enter the gravitational neighborhood of Jupiter, whiz by it in a few months and come right out carrying a greater velocity than when it came in. However, for New Horizons to accelerate, the planet must decelerate.

Approximately 1/1025 of the planet's energy will be stolen, but that doesn't matter says NASA, because the 1036 mentioned is followed by 25 zeroes, which is similar to taking away a "drop from the ocean" says Furquhar.

New Horizons will leave Jupiter at a frenetic 52,000 mph which incidentally, sets it as the record holder for the fastest-moving object ever to leave Earth. From there, it will start its trek to reach Pluto in June of 2015 before the start of the winter season in the ninth planet.

It's crucial to reach the destination before its atmosphere descends to the surface and freezes over. Pluto has an elliptical orbit unlike most of the planets, which makes for its different revolution pattern. Once New Horizons reaches Pluto, it will take photos and analyze the atmosphere and terrain, then proceed to an analysis of the three moons.

Most young science students learning about the solar system find out that planetary orbits are not perfectly circular, but rather elliptical, following an elongated oval path around the sun. This is especially true in recently discovered solar systems outside our own, where the eccentricity of planetary paths are far more pronounced. When planets initially form, they are believed to have circular orbits around their parent star, but for reasons that have never been entirely clear, these orbits stretch in to elliptical shapes over time. Theories include planets affecting each other's orbits, or gravitational tugs on newly formed planets from the primordial gaseous disk from which they are born.

The recent discovery of a "brown dwarf" in a distant solar system suggests another explanation. This "brown dwarf" has apparently been pulling on a gas giant orbiting close to a star identified only as HD 3651, approximately 36 light years from Earth. The gas giant, which is only 2/3 the size of Saturn, orbits far closer to its star than Mercury does the Sun, but in an extreme oval path. The brown giant on the other hand, is about thirty times as far away from HD 3651 as Pluto is from Sol. However, its mass is 50 times that of Jupiter - powerful enough to affect the closer planet's orbit over millions of years.

This theory has been around for awhile, but testing it has been difficult because brown dwarfs are dim and hard to see even with the best telescopes.

However, testing this hypothesis has proven difficult because these distant brown dwarfs are extremely dim and therefore difficult to observe. The discovery of this brown dwarf was made in the course of a study designed to find such "failed stars" - so-called because, while their chemical makeup is identical to full-fledged stars, they lack sufficient mass to ignite.

A similar brown dwarf was recently discovered in our own planetary neighborhood. However, at over 12 light years distant, it is too far away to have had any appreciable effect on the planetary orbits in our own system. In fact, one scientist, Massimo Marengo of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts suspects that brown dwarf stars may not be responsible for elliptical orbits very often. "We have done a quite extensive survey of nearby stars for which extrasolar planets have been observed," he says. "So far this is the only one in which we have found a brown dwarf companion, so it seems to be a relatively rare case."

Last month, Pluto was tossed out of the family of planets by the International Astronomical Union - but perhaps its not all bad, because even as Pluto has lost one family, it seems to have gained another.

Today, the "hot new thing" in planetary science is the Kuiper Belt - a ring of icy debris that orbits outside the Solar System proper. Many of these "Kuiper objects" - of which Pluto is now considered a part - is the "attic of the solar system," a veritable archaeological treasure house of artifacts dating from its earliest days.

Astronomers have identified some 1,100 Kuiper Belt objects , and there may be has many as half a million more. Many of these bodies are larger than 20 miles wide. One appears to be mostly rock with a coating of ice. Some are big snowballs. Some are less dense than ice, indicating a Swiss-cheese-like structure. A lot of them have moons. "The more we learn, the weirder it looks," says Harold Levinson of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Many Kuiper Belt objects have orbits similar to Pluto’s, and have been dubbed the "Plutinos."

Like Pluto, these have orbits, often at a sharp angle to the rest of the solar system. At least one of these -  nicknamed "Xena" -  is larger than Pluto.

Less than twenty years ago, the Kuiper Belt was not even on  maps of the solar system. Pluto (actually Neptune at that time, since Pluto had slipped inside Neptunian orbit) marked the outer limit. An astronomer during the 1950's, Gerard Kuiper (for whom the belt is named) theorized that such a region of small objects had existed at one point, but that Pluto (at the time believed to be much larger than it is) had pushed them out of our region of space.

The existence of Pluto - being a "rocky" planet that is half ice, with its tilted and irregular orbit - provided the first clues to astronomers that there was something else out there beyond the known solar system. Considering was these objects are teaching scientists about the formation of the solar system, this would seem to more than compensate Pluto for its elimination from the planetary roll.

NASA's New Horizons, on its way to newly "defrocked" Pluto, sent back the first photo taken by its high-resolution camera as part of the spacecraft's equipment testing phase. The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI)'s first image in space was star cluster Messier 7. But LORRI's real goal is to capture acquire the highest-resolution images of Pluto and its moons Charon during a flyby.

"Our hope was that LORRI's first image would prove...that LORRI was capable of providing the required high-resolution imaging of Pluto and Charon," says Andy Cheng, LORRI principal investigator. "Our hopes were not only met, but exceeded." The picture-taking was part of the spacecraft's equipment testing process where six of its other primary science instruments have already checked out.

Launched January this year, New Horizons has a long trip ahead and is expected to reach Pluto in 2015.

Recently, one of our staff writers urged a "grassroots" movement to save Pluto, which was recently stripped of its planetary status.  For those of you who agree that Pluto should remain a planet, here's some good news.

It seems as if the the astronomical  community is not about to let Pluto go down without a fight. 300 researchers recently signed a statement denouncing the IAU's recent definition demoting the ninth rock from the sun. A conference is planned next year where they hope to come up with an alternative definition of "planet." Alan Stern, who heads the New Horizons Mission to Pluto at NASA is helping to organize the conference.

"Teachers are writing me saying, 'We don't know how to teach this,'" Stern says. "We've got to help them out of this jam that the IAU has put them in," says Stern.

Another organizer, Owen Gingerich of Harvard University, believes Pluto's planet label could stick despite the IAU decision if most textbook authors choose to use it. "If the conference is broadly enough representative with the key players, then it may well be that it establishes a different nomenclature than what has been officially voted on by the IAU," he told New Scientist. "It might achieve a more satisfactory consensus," Gingerich says.

The date August 24, 2006 will go down in history as "the day Pluto lost its planethood." After the IAU kicked Pluto (currently Pluton) out of the cosmic club of planets, there have been a lot of disappointed Pluto fans (including myself). Online, there have been numerous movements surging to revive Pluto back into its orbit as the ninth planet.

Already, there have been people selling merchandise online that serves this very purpose. Some $25 shirts that simply state "PLUTO IS A PLANET," mugs, pin-on buttons, and other memorabilia are available online, so that people worldwide can buy them and make a statement. Some have even proclaimed to "Stop Planetary Discrimination."

All of us here have grown up with the knowledge of our solar system having nine planets. Now it's down to eight. If I might opine my personal thoughts, I was rather disheartened that the IAU demoted Pluto. My foundations of the solar system has been obsolete all this time. However, I guess this feeling is not uncommon. After all, some people are conservative, some others are open to big changes (planetary changes, at that). I do understand that the IAU has more right to declare what's a planet or what's not. But the whole "Save Pluto" movement does sound appealing.

We all have our own thoughts on this issue. I just gave mine. Now, what's yours? You know the drill: comment, comment, comment!