# New Horizons: Pluto has been revealed! =)



## Sheilawisz (Jul 14, 2015)

Today is a truly historic day for Space Exploration, because the Interplanetary Probe _New Horizons_ has finally flown very close to the distant Dwarf Planet Pluto after traveling for more than nine years all the way from Earth.

Within a few hours from now, we'll be receiving information and high definition photographs of Pluto for the first time ever. The dwarf planet had always been a mystery, but now it joins all the other planets that have been visited by a Probe in order to gather precise information about them.

So far, we already know some very curious facts about Pluto that we didn't know before:

1- Pluto is a little larger than we thought, with a diameter of 2370 kilometers.
2- Pluto turns out to be a reddish orange world.
3- Curiously, Pluto features a great, white and heart-shaped landmark on its surface.

4- There is Methane Ice in Pluto.
5- It could actually be snowing there!

New Horizons carries the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the Discoverer of Pluto.

For now, it remains unknown whether the spaceship has survived because there was a possibility that it could collide with ice or rock particles as it drew closer to the Plutonian system. We'll have to wait a little more to receive the latest transmissions, but most likely everything will be fine.

I am quite happy and excited because of this =)


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## Legendary Sidekick (Jul 14, 2015)

Good to know more about Pluto, a.k.a.






The Celestial Body Formerly Known As a Planet

(Is it me, or does Pluto's symbol look like a ballerina?)


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## Garren Jacobsen (Jul 14, 2015)

Legendary Sidekick said:


> Good to know more about Pluto, a.k.a.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Does that make Pluto a tiny dancer? And is Neptune the one singing hold me closer?


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## Aspasia (Jul 15, 2015)

This is so exciting! I'm basically glued to the New Horizons twitter feed. The images are amazing! Especially the images which compare the resolution we had of Pluto before and after the flyby!


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## Reaver (Jul 15, 2015)

That's cool and all but I have questions about THIS Pluto:








1) Why is it that Goofy wears clothes and can talk but Pluto can't?

B) Was Pluto once like Goofy but went insane and now acts the way he does? Was it caused by psychotropic or hallucinogenic drugs?

3) If so, why did Mickey Mouse take advantage of this? Is he a deranged sociopath?

IV) Did Mickey Mouse kidnap and then lobotomize Pluto, turning him into that?

C) If so, what happened to Pluto's family? Did they search for him? Did they get the police involved?


Can anyone answer any of these questions? No Donald Duck questions please... That's for another post.


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## Russ (Jul 15, 2015)

You will be pleased to know that New Horizons did survive arrival and positioning and is in the process of sending us tons and tons of great data.  I am super excited about this event!


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## Legendary Sidekick (Jul 15, 2015)

Reaver said:


> 1) Why is it that Goofy wears clothes and can talk but Pluto can't?
> 
> B) Was Pluto once like Goofy but went insane and now acts the way he does? Was it caused by psychotropic or hallucinogenic drugs?
> 
> ...


Disney may or may not have answered your questions, but they did explore the notion that both Goofy and Pluto are dogs in THIS short animation short entitled "Dog Show."


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## Legendary Sidekick (Jul 15, 2015)

Let me use that off-topic Mickey Short to transition to the ON-topic short, "Space Walkies."




(On topic @ ~1:20)


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## Reaver (Jul 15, 2015)

Soooo... no answers then?


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## Sheilawisz (Jul 15, 2015)

Indeed Russ, _New Horizons_ has survived the adventure and now we'll receive loads and loads of cool information.

So far, the presence of Water Ice has been confirmed as a large part of Pluto's interior even though most of the surface is composed of Nitrogen ice. The varied colors, geological activity and geographical features make Pluto one of the most beautiful celestial bodies in the solar system, it's not just a ball of ice as many people believed it would be.

I am very surprised by its colors, because I always imagined that Pluto would be blue...

The heart is incredible, what an alien and fascinating world Pluto has turned out to be. It makes me wish that we had Pluto orbiting Earth together with the Moon, so we could spend hours looking at it through our ordinary telescopes and binoculars. I love the Moon, but Pluto looks like a piece of art.

Its diameter of 2370 kilometers is a little larger than expected, but the mass is less than calculated... Maybe they were right when they demoted Pluto to the rank of Dwarf Planet, but it will always be a classical planet for most of us.

Take a look: News about Pluto.


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## Incanus (Jul 15, 2015)

Another cool Pluto fact I always found interesting (though not a recent discovery)--

It's satellite, Charon, is so large that the center of gravity is actually located between the two of them, meaning the two bodies tend circle around each other.  Very different than Earth and its satellite:  our center of gravity remains within the sphere of the earth itself, though it wobbles of course.

Go Pluto!  Very exciting event!


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## Ruby (Jul 15, 2015)

So, Pluto was a planet, then it was only a dwarf planet, and now it's a ...? 

Thank you Legendary Sidekick, I enjoyed watching the Mickey Mouse cartoons.

Did you know that if you go to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich (UK) there's a telescope which is pointing at Pluto, but when you look through it you see Disney's Pluto and not the dwarf planet?


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## Aspasia (Jul 15, 2015)

The best part is all the moons we've been able to discover!


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## Legendary Sidekick (Jul 15, 2015)

Ruby said:


> So, Pluto was a planet, then it was only a dwarf planet, and now it's a ...?


Demoted to moon! I knew it would come to this!

I once wrote a story in which two planets floated side by side. I guess Pluto and Charon actually have that relationship.




Also, Ruby, there are 35 more Mickey Shorts, and these are current with more in the making. (#37 was released last week.) One thing I really love is how each episode has its own music, and the spoken language changes with the setting. I love the India episode. Here's *the link to the playlist* if you want to bookmark it.


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## Trick (Jul 15, 2015)

Legendary Sidekick said:


> I once wrote a story in which two planets floated side by side. I guess Pluto and Charon actually have that relationship.



There's a Sci-Fantasy movie with that concept called Upside Down. It was actually pretty good.


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## Russ (Jul 16, 2015)

Sheilawisz said:


> Indeed Russ, _New Horizons_ has survived the adventure and now we'll receive loads and loads of cool information.
> 
> So far, the presence of Water Ice has been confirmed as a large part of Pluto's interior even though most of the surface is composed of Nitrogen ice. The varied colors, geological activity and geographical features make Pluto one of the most beautiful celestial bodies in the solar system, it's not just a ball of ice as many people believed it would be.
> 
> ...



Astronomy is a hobby of mine and I have a telescope that under ideal conditions should be able to get me a view of Pluto.  So far no luck but I will get it someday.

I really love the moon as well.  Spend many hours studying it through various lenses and never grow bored of it.


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## Sheilawisz (Jul 17, 2015)

Hey Russ, so you are a hobbyist Astronomer too?

I am not even a beginner in serious Astronomy, but I do feel loads of curiosity to observe the sky at night and try to see something up there. I have a little Celestron telescope, with 50mm of aperture and a magnification of 30x.

You can see it here:







Most people that are really into Astronomy speak only awful things about this model of telescope, but I enjoy it a lot and it has provided me with fantastic views of the Moon. I know that Galileo's telescope was not better than mine, so under ideal conditions I would be able to glimpse Jupiter's moons with it.

What model of telescope do you have?

Also, please check out this fun curiosity about the systems aboard _New Horizons_: The New Horizons probe uses a PlayStation CPU.

How about that?


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## Russ (Jul 17, 2015)

Sheilawisz said:


> Hey Russ, so you are a hobbyist Astronomer too?
> 
> I am not even a beginner in serious Astronomy, but I do feel loads of curiosity to observe the sky at night and try to see something up there. I have a little Celestron telescope, with 50mm of aperture and a magnification of 30x.
> 
> ...



Extremely cool.

I have been playing with telescopes for years and let me tell you the one thing I have learned.  The best telescope is the one you use.  If you are using that and enjoying that don't let anybody say ill of it.  My favourite observations are the planets so that kind of scope with some patience is plenty good.  And I really do spend hours just studying the moon, there is so much there to see and understand it never gets boring.

Funny you should mention Galileo.  I have read a huge amount about him and his trial etc and recently did a very popular presentation about him at our local SF con Ad Astra.  You should know that there is some controversy now in the history world as to whether or not Galileo made those observations of Jupiter, or they were made by Jesuit observers who shared their sketches etc with Galileo.  Galileo was not above claiming other people's work as his own.

Right now I am  using a Celestron Edge HD 9.25.  I really enjoy it, and with work so busy and giving as much time as I can to writing, it is nice to have the computerized guidance to make my sessions more productive.

Not surprised to see New Horizons using that kind of controller.  All those science guys are the best kind of geeks.


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## Incanus (Jul 17, 2015)

I haven't been able to follow the developments on this.  But I was wondering:  are there any good pics of Charon yet?  Surely the probe is taking such shots, yes?  Anyone know?

And what happens to the probe afterward?  Is it supposed to go out into the Kuiper belt?  That would be cool.


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## X Equestris (Jul 18, 2015)

Incanus said:


> I haven't been able to follow the developments on this.  But I was wondering:  are there any good pics of Charon yet?  Surely the probe is taking such shots, yes?  Anyone know?
> 
> And what happens to the probe afterward?  Is it supposed to go out into the Kuiper belt?  That would be cool.



This page has images for Charon:  https://www.nasa.gov/feature/charon-s-chasms-and-craters

I believe after the mission is done it will keep going, much like the Voyager and Pioneer probes.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Jul 18, 2015)

Oh, yeah… there are good pics of Charon alright! I was at the Boston Museum of Science, and the Planetarium had a 45 minute session, 30 devoted to Pluto, and the last 15 or so showed photos from New Horizons.

I was blown away just seeing what they did to get New Horizons to Pluto in 9 years. A direct route would have taken 12, but they used Jupiter's momentum to speed up the trip. Jupiter's over a billion miles away and Pluto's 3 billion. The precision these scientists are working with…! I mean, you really can't mess up that countdown or you just shot extremely expensive equipment into space for nothing.

Both Pluto and Charon are active worlds. Charon has a craterless section (proving that the surface is changing), and Pluto has no craters. There's a mountainous section, plains with these odd dark bumps—no one knows what they are. Charon has a canyon deep as the Grand Canyon but covering a larger area (by 3 or 4 times, I think). I remember some moons being tiny, like one egg-shaped moon was 30 miles at its largest diameter; its smallest diameter only 19 miles. Another may have had a diameter of 16 miles.

We voted whether or not Pluto is a planet. It was close, but my vote in favor put me on the losing side. (It's okay, Massachusetts; I'm used to it.) But now my reason is more informed. I always thought of a planet as a celestial body that orbits the sun. I can see how this definition doesn't work—or ALL of the asteroids would be planets too. If Pluto counts, we have hundreds of dwarf planets in the Kupier belt that would also count. But they _are_ called "dwarf planets."

Anyway, no matter Pluto's classification, it was cool to see its pictures only a few days after NASA got to see them, and the added bonus was seeing them on a screen larger than a movie theater screen!


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## Legendary Sidekick (Jul 18, 2015)

Oh… one more insight I gained today regarding a Pluto-related question posted on page one:



> _Is [Mickey Mouse] a deranged sociopath?_


Yes.

The latest Mickey-Pluto cartoon is all the evidence you need.


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## Sheilawisz (Jul 22, 2015)

Hello everyone!

Russ, thank you for your kind words. I agree with you that the best telescope is the one that we enjoy the most, so I won't listen to the people that hate and despise small telescopes like mine. I have been observing the Moon these past few nights, it's in the growing phases at the moment and I can see every tiny crater that it has.

Hey, the Celestron Edge HD 9.25 is a hell of a telescope!

What does the Moon look like through such a fine instrument? Have you observed Mars, the stripes and moons of Jupiter and beyond? When I point my telescope at Venus (at least, I _think_ that's Venus) all I see is a very bright dot of light, nothing spectacular really.

I did not know that about Galileo.

I accept that probably Galileo did not discover Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto by himself, but definitely somebody did observe them all those years ago by means of a telescope similar to mine. What makes the observations so difficult for me are the freaking high levels of light pollution where I live, so high that I can barely see any stars.

Apart from my telescope I also have Celestron 10x50 binoculars (UpClose G2) and thanks to them I can observe a few constellations, but nothing more than that.


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## Russ (Jul 23, 2015)

With various lenses and filters the moon looks amazing and on a cool night the crisp detail is amazing.  I have no trouble making out the spot on Jupiter, and the rings of Saturn.  I can get a good quality Venus as well.  Mars is an easy target and at certain times the moons of Jupiter look quite good as well.  I live North of Toronto, not too much light pollution and very nice crisp fall nights for observing.

I have a set of binos with the same specs as well.  I like them on a clear night when I don't  have much time.  They are good for the moon, you can split some double stars nicely with them, and I find they can  help me detect colour on various stars as well.


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