Monthly Archives: June 2015

New Horizons mission, Pluto

STEM, STEAM, and Pluto

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The Many Views of Pluto

It’s now two weeks from the New Horizons close flyby of Pluto and Charon. The images are flowing, science data are streaming in, and the team has made pictures almost immediately available online for the rest of us to marvel at.  I know for a fact that this mission has taken science educators as well as scientists by storm, and the mission itself has made a lot of information available to educators, the media, and the public. In a delightful development, it has also caught the imagination of artists and musicians as well.

A great many very talented astro-imaging experts have taken to doing a little processing on those releases, resulting in some fine views and a lot of speculation on social media about we’re almost seeing on Pluto and Charon.

A processed version of a New Horizons image of Pluto and Charon, by C. Menoir-Salvan.

For example, this view is a stacked and processed image from a June 18th release from the New Horizons team. The astro-imager is C. Menoir-Salvan, and his work has spurred a LOT Of discussion about what those features could be.

The clearest views are yet to come, so these discussions among planetary science-savvy folks has been very interesting to participate in and follow. Keep in mind that during flyby, we’ll see some images, but due to the lengthy travel time for the signals from New Horizons, the data will be streaming in over the next year or so! We’ll get to see good images of Pluto now, and then the real scientific treasure will make its way to the mission teams. New Horizons is really the scientific gift that keeps on giving!

The Artistic View

Pluto and Charon, a space artist's view of the pair, with a distant Sun in the background. Copyright David A. Hardy/astroart.org
Pluto and Charon, a space artist’s view of the pair, with a distant Sun in the background. Copyright David A. Hardy/astroart.org

Artists and musicians are being inspired by the whole Pluto thing as well, with some lovely additions to the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) realm. Here are a couple of the many examples I’ve seen float across my view the past few days. The British space artist David Hardy offered his view of what Pluto and Charon look like. He’s very tuned into the science behind what planetary surfaces can look like, and he graciously allowed me to share his view of the double planet here.

Pluto, Charon, and the Sun — a space art scene by scientist and space artist Dan Durda. Copyright Dan Durda.

Dan Durda is a space artist and planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who has been inspired by New Horizons and the mission to Pluto in more ways than one! Here’s one of his depictions of Pluto and Charon, with the distant Sun shedding a bit of light on the scene. Both Dan and David are members of a wonderful organization called the International Association of Astronomical Artists at IAAA.org, and I count a number of the members as friends and colleagues.

In the music department, there are folks out there creating Pluto tunes and pieces inspired by the distant system. My own favorite composer, Geodesium (the stage name of Mark C. Petersen), created a piece called “Charon” for a project a while back. You can hear a snippet here. It’s on the album Stellar Collections.

Pluto (in the background) and Charon (foreground), as depicted for a press release from Gemini Observatory. Pluto/Charon models from ourtesy of Seeker (Software Bisque); plumes and ice fields added by Mark C. Petersen, Loch Ness Productions. Starfield from DigitalSky 2, courtesy Sky-Skan, Inc.

It’s a space music composition meant to evoke Pluto’s cold, forbidding-looking, yet intriguing companion world and I like to think of it as Charon’s siren song.

Mark also created a vision of Pluto and Charon for a Gemini Observatory press release a few years ago, when astronomers found evidence of possible geyser-like or ice volcano action on Charon. He used a program called Seeker (from Software Bisque), added in a DigitalSky starfield, and some plumes that were indicated in the observations. I can’t wait to see if this vision, as well as Michael’s and Dan’s, have played out for real. Certainly the preliminary science results indicate something interesting happening at these worlds!

New Horizons PI Alan Stern sent me a link to an amazingly cool song written by singer-songwriter Craig Werth and performed by NYC-based folksinger Christine Lavin, who also went out and filmed a lot of people for the segment. It really shows their love of Pluto. The song is called “Oh Pluto!”, and it’s a great tribute to Pluto and its popularity. You’ll see and hear a number of folk legends, an actor from “The Sopranos”, a band member from Dropkick Murphys, as well as men, women, boys and girls from all walks of life, sending their greetings to Pluto.

There are many more folks paying tribute to Pluto in their own ways — they’re engaged, entranced, and excited by the exploration and the discoveries to come. Whoever you are, wherever you are, use your own talents to salute Pluto, and also to the people on the New Horizons mission. They’re dedicated scientists, students, technicians, administrators — all working really hard to bring this distant world into focus for the rest of us!  (P.S. If you know of other space artists and musicians who have created works about Pluto, let me know in the comments and I’ll do a second entry, soon!)


 

amateur astronomy, astronomy, conjunction

Jupiter and Venus Hug in the West

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Catch the Conjunction!

The planets Venus and Jupiter in conjunction around June 30, 2015.
The planets Venus and Jupiter in conjunction around June 30, 2015.

Take a moment from your busy day to step outside after sunset tonight and the next few nights and check out the close conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the western sky.  They make quite a pretty sight in the gathering twilight. I heard someone describe them as “hugging in the sunset” and that’s a very poetic way to see them.

June 30 conjunction view.
June 30 conjunction view.

“Conjunction” is an astronomy term that means “two objects look fairly close together in the sky”.  The formal definition is “when two objects in the sky have the same right ascension or ecliptical longitude when observed from Earth.” These astronomical events can include specific bright stars, as well, so occasionally you might see one or more of the planets in conjunction with a star such as Spica (in Virgo) or Regulus (in Leo).

What’s Really Happening?

As planets orbit the Sun (and as the Moon orbits Earth), they appear against a backdrop of stars, and occasionally other planets are in the view, too.  Think of it like being on a merry-go-round and looking out at the scenery as it goes by. People standing near the carousel appear against a backdrop of other people or trees or parking lots or whatever is out there.  They may all look close together, but in reality, they’re not. This is because we live in a 3D universe where objects are distributed throughout space.  From your perspective, however, they seem to be close together.

So, how far apart are they?  Right now Venus is about  670,198, 462 kilometers (416,442,017 miles) from Jupiter. (That’s 4.48 times the distance from Earth to the Sun.) If one of the planets happened to be in conjunction with the star Regulus, they would be 77.6 light-years apart! So, conjunctions are something of an optical illusion, collapsing the reality of space between them.

Conjunctions can happen on other worlds, and someday when we’re all living on Mars, we’ll be able to see events like this one that include Earth in the view. Until then, however, let’s make the most of the view from our planet! The planets are visible right after sunset and will slowly move toward the western horizon over the next few hours. Take out your telescope or binoculars to get a more detailed look at Jupiter. Happy gazing and clear skies!