Say Hello To Pluto
/Pluto Fly By
Hello there, Pluto.
It's nice to finally make your acquaintance. That’s an understatement. It's awe inspiring to finally see you.
NASA hit it out of the park with these recent photos of Pluto. The spacecraft, New Horizons, zoomed by at a blistering 30,000 miles per hour relative to the dwarf planet's surface. Snapping photos and gleaning information like nobody's business.
It will take about 18 months to receive all the information transmitted by the tiny spacecraft that is all the size of a grand piano. A tantalizing feast of treats will be savored over many days by the scientists at NASA.
Pluto is about two-thirds the size of Earth's moon. We have already begun to identify icy mountain ranges extending as high as 11,000 feet on this mysterious planet.
“This graphic presents a view of Pluto and Charon as they would appear if placed slightly above Earth’s surface and viewed from a great distance.
Recent measurements obtained by New Horizons indicate that Pluto has a diameter of 2370 km, 18.5% that of Earth’s, while Charon has a diameter of 1208 km, 9.5% that of Earth’s.”
The Sun Shines On
NASA was on a roll with delights for us mere mortals. They also captured this new single shot of planet Earth in full sunlight.
The photo on the left was caught in 1972.
The photo on the right was snapped in 2015.
Over forty years is a long time in between selfies.
The difficulty with this particular selfie is that you need to have the sun to your back and be in the just the right position to grab this shot as you're zooming past.
Most of the images we have seen of Earth since 1972 have been composites.
“In order to view the Earth as a fully illuminated globe, a person (or camera) must be situated in front of it, with the sun directly at his or her back.
Not surprisingly, it can be difficult to arrange this specific lighting scheme for a camera-set up that’s orbiting in space at speeds approaching thousands of miles per hour.”
Observer Effect In Outer And Quantum Mechanics
Tracking the images and wealth of information that NASA makes available to us is a humbling and yet enlightening experience. Keeping the solar system in mind helps us to keep things in perspective.
Insights into our solar system remind us of the vast connectedness we have to everything.
Talk about a perfect example of "the observer changes the nature of what is being observed" within quantum mechanics. Passing by Jupiter, the spacecraft New Horizons gained a push in speed from its gravitational force. The effect for Jupiter was that its years are now slightly shorter.
“Jupiter lost as much kinetic energy as New Horizons gained, causing it to fall a little closer to the sun. A year on Jupiter today is slightly shorter than it was before — all because humans wanted to get a good look at Pluto.”
That's a stop and pause moment.
Marbles In The Sky
Back to our dear Pluto.
Finally, we have a completed family portrait of the planets in our solar system.
Yes, we are running with the idea that Pluto counts as one of our planets. Besides, look how nicely our planets line up in this pattern of nine.
We don't care what anyone says, Pluto, you'll always be a part of the family.
Maybe you're the eccentric relative we always wonder about. The one whose story never quite matches. We’re all good with that. We love you anyway.
Cheers.
