2¢/Word
Once a month a member of the astronomical society writes an article for the local paper. I wrote the one that will appear this month. I had about five weeks to work on it, but I just wrote it in a half-hourt this evening. If you read it, let me know how it sounds and any changes you'd recommend.
Pluto's Family Portrait
NASA's New Horizons probe was launched on Jan. 19, 2006 on a mission to explore Pluto, the last unvisited planet in our solar system. But a funny thing happened along the way; Pluto lost its status as a planet. No worries! Plenty of curiosity still surrounds this distant body as confirmed by the creation of the first full Pluto system image by a team of astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 but its biggest moon, Charon, wasn't discovered until 1978. Not until multiple time exposures of the Pluto system were made with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2005 were two more moons discovered. These tiny and dim moons are named Nix and Hydra and are only 55 and 45 miles across, respectively. These moons are so small and distant that they are 5,000 times fainter than Pluto appears, which itself is difficult to see in even a large amateur telescope. By comparison, the biggest moon Charon, has a diameter of 752 miles.
These discoveries ahead of the arrival of New Horizons do not serve to steal away the interplanetary traveler's thunder. To the contrary, knowledge of these moons will give the probe's team a head start so they know where to focus their instruments when the craft arrives in 2015. New Horizons won't arrive for over seven years, but it has already made new discoveries on a much more well-known planet, Jupiter.
Though it set a record with the fasted probe launch at over 36,000 mph, a speed boost was needed to get to Pluto as fast as possible. Its orbit is carrying Pluto farther away from the sun and Plutoian winter will set in. As it gets colder, the tenuous atmosphere will likely freeze and fall to the surface. To get a speed boost, New Horizons passed by the Jupiter in late February 2007. In doing so the probe was pulled in by the massive gravity and sped up. The trajectory did not fall into an orbit, but caused it to "slingshot out" past Jupiter with more speed. This is called a gravity assist maneuver. Without this assist, the trip to Pluto would have taken three years longer.
Not wanting to waste any opportunity for scientific discovery, New Horizons turned its eyes on Jupiter and spotted details never seen by a probe before such as polar lightning and the structure inside eruptions on the volcanic moon of Io. However, headline news will come in the middle of the next decade when New Horizons sends back the first up-close pictures of Pluto and its newly-expanded family.
Pluto's Family Portrait
NASA's New Horizons probe was launched on Jan. 19, 2006 on a mission to explore Pluto, the last unvisited planet in our solar system. But a funny thing happened along the way; Pluto lost its status as a planet. No worries! Plenty of curiosity still surrounds this distant body as confirmed by the creation of the first full Pluto system image by a team of astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 but its biggest moon, Charon, wasn't discovered until 1978. Not until multiple time exposures of the Pluto system were made with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2005 were two more moons discovered. These tiny and dim moons are named Nix and Hydra and are only 55 and 45 miles across, respectively. These moons are so small and distant that they are 5,000 times fainter than Pluto appears, which itself is difficult to see in even a large amateur telescope. By comparison, the biggest moon Charon, has a diameter of 752 miles.
These discoveries ahead of the arrival of New Horizons do not serve to steal away the interplanetary traveler's thunder. To the contrary, knowledge of these moons will give the probe's team a head start so they know where to focus their instruments when the craft arrives in 2015. New Horizons won't arrive for over seven years, but it has already made new discoveries on a much more well-known planet, Jupiter.
Though it set a record with the fasted probe launch at over 36,000 mph, a speed boost was needed to get to Pluto as fast as possible. Its orbit is carrying Pluto farther away from the sun and Plutoian winter will set in. As it gets colder, the tenuous atmosphere will likely freeze and fall to the surface. To get a speed boost, New Horizons passed by the Jupiter in late February 2007. In doing so the probe was pulled in by the massive gravity and sped up. The trajectory did not fall into an orbit, but caused it to "slingshot out" past Jupiter with more speed. This is called a gravity assist maneuver. Without this assist, the trip to Pluto would have taken three years longer.
Not wanting to waste any opportunity for scientific discovery, New Horizons turned its eyes on Jupiter and spotted details never seen by a probe before such as polar lightning and the structure inside eruptions on the volcanic moon of Io. However, headline news will come in the middle of the next decade when New Horizons sends back the first up-close pictures of Pluto and its newly-expanded family.