PLUTO REVEALS ITSELF
THIS WEEK TO NASA PROBE

       Our first and only close up view of famous dwarf planet Pluto will happen Tuesday, July 14, and the Space Age will have taken 58 years to reveal the faces of all the Solar System’s major members.

       Pluto is the last of the classic nine planets to show its face, and as you read this NASA’s New Horizons gets closer by 32,000 miles every hour.

       On July 14, New Horizons will begin its closest approach that will have it traveling 30,000 mph through the Pluto system that includes its large moon Charon and four tiny ones.  At a closest approach of just 8,000 miles, the spacecraft will be busy taking photos, measuring the atmosphere and making other measurements with seven instruments. Pluto is knocked over on its side (like Uranus) and the approach of New Horizons to the dwarf planet and its moons will be like flying through a bull’s-eye.

New Horizon spacecraft...the size of a Grand Piano   NASA artwork

       The first photos and data will take more than more than 9 hours to travel the 4 billion miles distance between Pluto and Earth.  But 85 years after its discovery, the wait will be worth it.

       Since May 2015 New Horizons has been sending back new photos across the millions of miles, each batch reveals details that tantalize astronomers anxious for the close-ups. Each day the nuclear-powered New Horizons has become 744,000 miles closer—the nine-year journey for the 1,000 pound spacecraft shaped like a grand piano is almost over. Here’s what we’ve learned about Pluto in the last 60 days from the $700,000 investment by US taxpayers in the last 60 days about Pluto:

·      Pluto is 1,471 miles wide; while moon Charon is 750 miles wide (our Moon is 2,190 miles in diameter) Astronomers are surprised that each is extremely different in appearance.

·      Pluto has two distinct faces, one dark and one bright. There appear to be several large craters, and a thin atmosphere of super-cold methane (-200 F.) might mean there are clouds. And there is a series of four, equally spaced dark circles maybe 300 miles in diameter around the equator that have created speculation from volcanoes to alien origins.

·      Charon has a dark polar cap, and is grayish. It also shows sign of some large craters. The other four moons, Kerberos, Styx, Nix and Hydra, will have to await the close encounter to be revealed.     

·      From the distance of four billion miles from the Sun is just a bright star, daylight on Pluto is similar to late twilight on Earth.

PLUTO and CHARON two hemispheres

       The controversy over Pluto’s demotion from planet status—though logical—is not going away, particularly with these new images giving the dwarf planet some character.

       New Horizons was launched in January 2006, when Pluto was still a planet.  But that changed in Prague, Czech Republic, at a meeting of the 1,600-member International Astronomical Union, the governing body that officially names celestial objects, among other duties. 

       Because there have been so many Pluto-size objects discovered beyond Pluto 4 billion miles away in the Kuiper Belt, the IAU met with a dilemma in 2006—add four or five new planets, or demote Pluto and create a new class of objects like it. The Kuiper Belt contains perhaps hundreds of thousands of rock and ice objects that were leftovers of the creation up to 10 billion miles from the Sun.

       The IAU opted for the demotion, and for Pluto supporters—named after a deity of Hyades—all hell broke loose!  Many astronomers and science educators still refuse to acknowledge the IAU's dwarf status for Pluto

       Also changing its status to dwarf planet is the largest asteroid, Ceres, orbiting in a ring of rubble between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres, 700 miles wide, is the only round object in the asteroid belt, is currently being orbited by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft.

       Beyond Pluto are dwarf planets Eris and Quaoar, each more than 2,000 miles wide. And another dozen dwarf planets have been discovered in the 1,000 mile range. 

       The fact that Pluto has five moons is reason enough to call it a planet, some say.  So, it is reasonable to think that other dwarf planets will also have moons.  Pluto's big moon, Charon, was discovered in 1978, and orbits extremely close at just 12,000 miles above the surface! They are in fact a “binary planet” revolving around a point outside the center of Pluto.  The other two 20-mile-wide moons, Nix and Hydra were discovered by the Hubble Telescope in 2005, and 10 miles moons Kerberos and Styx were found by Hubble in 2012.

CLYDE TOMBAUGH and DISCOVERY PLATES

       Many supporters of the planetary status for Pluto are endeared to its popular discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, and the man who first began seeking “Planet X,” wealthy socialite Percival Lowell. Known for his promotion of the canals on Mars in a series of popular books in the early 1900s, Lowell theorized that Neptune was being gravitationally pulled by an unseen Planet X.  He employed Tombaugh in 1927 to begin a search mission, and the humble astronomer discovered Pluto in the constellation Gemini in 1930 as a result of a tedious search of photographic plates.

       The discovery of Pluto was big news, it doubled the size of the Solar System, and the planet was at first thought to be as large as the Earth.  Tombaugh became famous as the third human to discover a planet (William Herschel in England discovered Uranus in 1781 and J.G. Galle in Germany first confirmed Neptune in 1846.) He later developed military optical tracking cameras for rocket launches. But he was always accessible to amateur astronomers at his Albuquerque, New Mexico home.

       When he died in 1997, he was an icon among the astronomy community, and often toured regions of the country, autographing posters and books at star parties and Pluto lectures.

       And the memory of Clyde Tombaugh is likely to live on for many more years as some of the astronomer's ashes are being carried aboard the New Horizon spaceship bound for Pluto. 

       When blasted off the USA Cape Kennedy Space Port on Jan. 19, 2006, New Horizon was the fastest spacecraft to leave Earth at some 25,000 mph, passing the Moon in just 9 hours—a trip that took 72 hours for Apollo astronauts.

       July 15, 2015 will be an historic day for planetary astronomers as the first close-up images of Pluto will complete the photo gallery of the traditional Solar System. 

       The only detailed images of Uranus and Neptune (and some of their moons) are courtesy of the Voyager 2 flybys in 1986 and 1989, respectively.  Soon Pluto, a planet for 66 years and a dwarf planet for the last nine years, will have a face.

       Websites to keep up with the latest include: nasa.gov; seeplutonow.com; dailypluto.com; spacedaily.com; space.com; universetoday.com; facebook/New Horizons and spaceweather.com.