New Horizons Sees Pluto (Sept. 24)
1 2016-04-05T10:08:11+00:00 Brock Earth Sciences 443498efbb7251f48d0d638e5c57b8774f100004 14 1 A white arrow marks Pluto in this New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) picture taken Sept. 21, 2006. Seen at a distance of about 4.2 billion kilometers (2.6 billion miles) from the spacecraft, Pluto is little more than a faint point of light among a dense field of stars. Mission scientists knew they had Pluto in their sights when LORRI detected an unresolved "point" in Pluto's predicted position, moving at the planet's expected motion across the constellation of Sagittarius near the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute plain 2016-04-05T10:08:11+00:00 Internet Archive SPD-SLRSY-5243 image Where -- Milky Way Galaxy What -- Sagittarius What -- Constellation What -- LORRI What -- Imager What -- Long Range Reconnaissance Imager What -- New Horizons What -- Pluto Planets Jet Propulsion Laboratory Solar System Exploration Brock Earth Sciences 443498efbb7251f48d0d638e5c57b8774f100004This page is referenced by:
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Former Planet, now proud Dwarf Planet
And then there is Pluto. Discovered in 1930, it had been classified as the ninth planet for ~75 years. On Aug 24, 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) adopted a new definition of what it takes to be planet and Pluto did not meet that definition. If you want more information on this, please click here. Now Pluto is classified as a dwarf planet and #134340 in the minor planet catalog. However, after the New Horizon mission visited Pluto in 2015 and produced so much new information, we include it here. This image compares our knowledge of Pluto before and after the New Horizon mission (Hubble space telescope vs camera on orbiter).
In terms of size and density Pluto is very similar to Neptune’s moon Triton. New Horizons, which has returned spectacular results had a long way to go. In 2006 Pluto appeared like this in New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager:
After New Horizon's encounter with Pluto, we now know that it looks like this:
Pluto is not the only dwarf planet. Located inside the Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is the dwarf planet Ceres, which is currently the focus of the Dawn Mission. If you have 2:37 min to spare, you may want to check this recent video, giving some of the highlights of the Dawn mission this far:
Here is an update the Dawn mission December 2018: Evidence for carbon-rich surface on Ceres
