Five More Years...

Five years from today, New Horizons will be rendezvousing with Pluto, and stunning the world by revealing the first close-ups of the scorned planet, images and data certain to transform our very understanding of this little world at the edge of the solar system.The data we receive on July 14, 2015 will not be the first the little spacecraft sends from Pluto. Six months earlier, in January 2015, New Horizons will begin taking and sending home its first close-up images of Pluto. And data will continue coming in after the July 14 approach.The progress of New Horizons can be followed at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20100714.phpThe last few months have been quite active on the Pluto front. A video here, http://bossblogster.com/gps/the-dwarf-planet-pluto-aggmanuk/ , in spite of its mention of the 2006 demotion as fact rather than as one interpretation, provides much useful information about Pluto and ends with announcement of the New Horizons flyby. David J. Eicher of Astronomy magazine provides a video tour of “How We’ll Explore Pluto” here http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=9874 to accompany the magazine’s July 2010 article with the same title.The “Naming X” contest to name an asteroid, which took place from April 30-May 30, recently announced its winners and runners up, here http://venetiaburneyphair.blogspot.com/2010/06/winners-runners-up-announced.htmlAccording ...