No More My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas
Aug 17th, 2006 by Brian A. Thomas
While it has to have a final vote, it looks like we will soon have 3 more planets in our solar system for an even dozen. Soon after that they may be anywhere from 24 to 53 planets in our solar system, depending on how further studies go on.
If you don’t remember the current 9 planets you can use the mnemonics device, My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas to help remember Mars, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. You can add to that list, Ceres between Mars and Jupiter, Charon after Pluto (Charon currently is Pluto’s moon, under the new definition they become the first binary planets in our solar system) and 2003 UB313, which may get named Lila (or Xena, the name the press has used, though Lila is the name the guy who discovered it gave it, named for his daughter). I guess we could say “My Very Excellent Mother, Christine, Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas, Cookies with Lila,” to help us with the 12 planets. Ceres would be the hard one for me to remember, as I remember the current 9 without the mnemonic device. The link above includes images of the 12 planets (in order and to scale in regard to size but not distance), and another image showing 12 more objects (in size scale to the Earth) that are on a watch list that need further study to see if they will be classified as planets or not.
