Posted in Astronomy at 19:15 on 7 October 2015
From You Tube (via Astronomy Picture of the Day 6/10/15) this shows the (minor) planet and its largest moon orbiting their common centre of gravity before flying past and giving a view of Pluto -and its atmosphere – backlit by the sun.
Posted in Astronomy at 12:00 on 3 October 2015
Astronomy Picture of the Day yesterday had a stunning view of Pluto’s moon Charon as taken by the New Horizons probe. The moon looks oddly lop-sided, probably due to the shadowing on its side pointing away from the sun:-
That’s a big fissure running right across its middle.
Posted in Astronomy at 12:00 on 19 July 2015
It hasn’t taken NASA long to get this New Horizons flyby sequence of Pluto up on You Tube:-
And on Astronomy Picture of the Day on 17/7/15 was this photo of Pluto’s largest moon Charon.
Wonderful stuff.
Every single time spaceprobes have gone to somewhere as yet unexplored they have yielded unexpected results. This time the youth of Pluto’s surface was a surprise.
Posted in Astronomy at 20:43 on 9 July 2015
Astronomy Picture of the Day was 20 years old on Jun 16th. It has been on a bit of a roll recently.
The Pinwheel Galaxy (Jun 14th):-
The Black Eye galaxy (Jun 18th):-
On 23rd Jun there was this star bubble round Sharpless 2-308:-
This is a picture of Zeta Ophiuchi (Jul 5th) which is travelling to the left at 24 kilometres per second thus causing the bow-shock in the interstellar dust as shown:-
The next day gave us this picture of clouds near Rho Ophiuchi
Then Jul 8th had this stunning scene of Dione, Saturn and Enceladus (Saturn is visible only as a faint arc and its rings are edge-on):-
Fly-over Ceres, Jun 10th, a composite of still pictures:-
It’s exciting times for NASA as New Horizons is getting very close to Pluto. See yesterday’s picture:-
Wonderful stuff.
Posted in Astronomy at 13:00 on 27 July 2011
This was Astronomy Picture of the Day on 22/7/11.
The two photos, taken five days apart less than a month ago, show the four moons of Pluto; Charon, Nix, Hydra and P4 – so young it’s not yet been named – obviously in orbit around the main planetoid.
Four moons. Not bad for an object that was downgraded from planet status only recently.
Earth only has the one. (Cruithne isn’t properly a moon of Earth.)
