Eris (part of the Astronomy series)

An easy find just off Forest Road 271 in Park County. Not too far from Tarryall!

Eris is a dwarf planet: the largest dwarf planet yet discovered- one quarter larger than Pluto, even.

Discovered on January 5^th, 2005 by the Palomar Observatory team consisting of Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz; the same team that has also discovered Makemake, Haumea (though there is still controversy on Haumea), Sedna, Orcus and Quaoar.

Once called “Planet X”, a name she coincidently shared with Pluto for awhile (when a new planet is being postulated and looked for, it is called “X” until a new name is accepted) the team of discoverers called her Xena at first. She would have been the first planet named for a fictional character if the name had been approved: instead she is named for the Greek goddess of Discord.

For awhile, NASA referred to her as the 10^th planet, at which point the IAU decided since there may be thousands of planets Pluto sized or there about, something had to be done about the word “planet”.

What is a planet, exactly?

If you say it’s a large rocky body that goes around the Sun; then Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune don’t count because they are not rocky. If you say it’s a thing big enough to have its own moons, then Mercury and Venus are not planets because they don’t have moons. If you say “a planet has cleared its orbit” (one sticking point with Pluto and the IAU), then Mercury is the only planet. Yep, Earth doesn’t count.

So dwarf planets Eris, Pluto, Makemake and Haumea are small icy bodies out past Neptune (or Trans Neptunian Objects. TNOs for short). Also called plutoids- because they are Pluto-like- and also called Kuiper Belt Objects. Some of them also count as Cubewanos, which is a cool word to say, and refers to KBOs that are not in gravitational resonance with Neptune, so Pluto does not count in this case. But I digress…

So Eris is a planet. A dwarf planet. Number 10 of 13 planets, and the list is growing as more are discovered. How cool is that?

The cache is a small peanut butter jar with leopard-print tape.

Originally I thought this science series would be a power trail, but things being the way things are, these astronomy-themed caches are not very power-trail-ish. Instead, the first half can be found along Lake George’s Forest Rd 271. This is a 4x4 trail; please do not attempt with a regular car! Terrain and difficulty ratings are for people who drive to the cache locations; if you hike or mountain bike, of course the D/Ts will be different.

There will be a mixture of regular sized and small caches to start. We have a lot of peanut-butter jars to repurpose. The key is to have fun! And stay safe!

Peace out!

FTF brags go to Sportslane!