Alan Stern Quotes

Pluto has a very interesting history, and there is a lot of work that we need to do to understand this very complicated place.

It's interesting - Pluto's almost a brand unto itself. It's the farthest. It's the most diminutive of the classical planets. It's been maligned by astronomers. It's always the one with all the question marks in the back of the textbook in the table. I think children identify with it because it's smaller, kind of cute.

If you go to planetary science meetings and hear technical talks on Pluto, you will hear experts calling it a planet every day.

Pluto is the new Mars.

I call Pluto the harbinger.

Of course Pluto is a planet: It's massive enough to have its shape controlled by gravity rather than material strength, which is the hallmark of planethood.

I think when people see Pluto revealed by New Horizons, its satellite system, its complex surface, its atmosphere, I think they'll have a hard time saying 'That's not a planet' because it obviously will be, and I think most people are already coming to that opinion anyway, but I think that's really going to drive it home viscerally.

I think that one of the things that will come out of the New Horizons mission is that the public will take a look, and they won't know what else to call Pluto but a planet - and a pretty exciting one.

Why can't Pluto be a planet? Some people like Pluto. And if it doesn't exist then they don't have a favorite planet. Right? Please write back but not in cursive because I can't read cursive.

In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet.

The Pluto system is much more complex than I had expected.

Back before the Kuiper Belt was discovered, Pluto did look like a misfit that didn't belong with either the terrestrials or the giant planets.

Pluto is as far across as Manhattan to Miami, but its atmosphere is bigger than the Earth's.

I actually started my career in planetary science with a master's thesis on Pluto.

Why did we do that to Pluto? We had it good with Pluto.

There is a planet named Pluto, but we don't have one named Goofy. Goofy would be a good name for this planet. It certainly qualifies.

I refuse to accept Pluto's resignation as a planet.

I'm the one who originally coined the term 'dwarf planet,' back in the nineteen-nineties.

Pluto has strong atmospheric cycles: it snows on the surface; the snows sublimate and go back into the atmosphere each 248 year orbit.

Pluto and its brethren are the most populous class of planets in our solar system.

Whether there's even an ocean on Pluto deep inside is a question I hope New Horizons can address in indirect ways.

Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we've seen in the solar system.

There are lots of really interesting little planets out there in the Kuiper Belt, but Pluto's the only one that's got all the cool attributes.

To say that what a planet is doesn't matter would be to imply that a planetary scientist couldn't explain to someone what the field is about.

You could not have predicted the amazing discoveries at Pluto, even though we have been to a couple of objects in the solar system that were at least a little analogous to Pluto.