Alan Stern Quotes

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

People know a planet when they see one, and I think that's a pretty darn good test, in fact, for planethood.

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

As a planetary scientist, I don't know what else to call Pluto: It's big and round and thousands of miles wide.

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.

Look at that! If you ever needed convincing that we live in the solar system, that we are on a ball of rock, orbiting around the Sun with other balls of rock, then look at that! That's the solar system coming down and grabbing you by the throat.

The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle.

The sun and its retinue of planets drift as a group through the vast gulfs of space that separate the stars.

Planets are too dim to be detected with existing equipment, far away, except in these very special circumstances where they're seen by their gravitational effect.

The smaller the planets are, they are, other things being equal, of so much the greater density; for so the powers of gravity on their several surfaces come nearer to equality. They are likewise, other things being equal, of the greater density, as they are nearer to the sun.

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.

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

I call Pluto the harbinger.

Planets look about the same here as they do to you on the Earth because we really aren't that much closer. Our home, the International Space Station, orbits around the Earth at about 200 miles.

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.

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

The planets. Now footnote, I'm including Pluto in the planets, because I think it's terrible what they did to Pluto. And it's still a planet to me. I grew up with Pluto as a planet, it will always be a planet.

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.

The sun is the primary puzzle in the universe.

Regardless of what humans do to the climate, there will still be a rock orbiting the sun.

You think of floating on a rock in space as so alien, but that's exactly what we're doing.

It now seems logical that all the stars, like our own sun, must have formed with a system of planets around them.

Mars does not belong to 'America,' nor to Earth, nor to human beings.