NEWS - Charon as a planet? That Sty(n)x!

OK. I get why the International Astronomical Union wants to designate 2003 UB313 as a planet. That makes perfect sense--it's bigger than Pluto and it has its own moon. That works for me. (I also note the tentative name of "Xena" is not being used. This means its moon will have to be called something other than "Gabrielle," or future astronomy students will be left scratching their heads.)

I also can deal with Ceres as a planet. When it was first discovered, it was called a planet, and only reclassified after more asteroids were discovered; nonetheless, reclassifying the biggest asteroid as the smallest planet doesn't seem to make that much difference--unless you're writing a textbook or looking for funds to send a space probe.

But Charon? Why? Or, more on my point, why not Earth's moon, Jupiter's Galilean moons, and Saturn's Titan? If you're favoring Kuiper-Belt objects (or former Kuiper-Belt objects), why not Neptune's Triton? If you're going to count large moons as planets, Charon is definitely not the first one you should list. Wikipedia notes in their article on this subject that the Pluto-Charon system orbiting a common center of gravity makes it a "double-planet" system, but Pluto is much larger than Charon. It bothers me that a smaller moon will be called a planet while larger ones aren't.