Category Archives: Pluto

New Horizons mission, Pluto, science and art

MORE of Pluto in the Arts

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STEM, STEAM, and PLUTO, continued…

The rock band Styx poses with the New Horizons team at mission control at JHU’s Applied Physics Lab. NASA/JHU-APL/New Horizons

The other day I posted in an article called STEM, STEAM, and Pluto, about how artists and musicians are showing a little Pluto love in their work. Just yesterday, the New Horizons team had a visit from the great band Styx, which is only appropriate since the name of one of Pluto’s moons is Styx. They had some major hits, including the song “Come Sail Away”, which was a theme song for many of us in planetariums where laser shows played. I hadn’t listened to that piece for a long time, so yesterday, I pulled it up on Spotify and it was just as great as ever, and a wonderful theme for this mission.

There are new pieces of artwork and videos coming out just about every day, as people realize just how cool this little world and its exploration is going to be. Here’s a great little piece by the Galaxy Girls, showing their great love for Pluto in this music video.


 

Alan Stern also announced a great little video called “The Wait”, that dramatizes our long wait for the flyby of Pluto. I like that it takes place in a planetarium, where I hope a lot of people will be visiting next week. There are a lot of great women and men who work in planetariums who are just waiting to share the wonders of Pluto with you!


Don Davis's Pluto postage stamp.
Don Davis’s Pluto postage stamp.
Pluto with a thicker atmosphere. Copyright 1996 Don Davis. Used by permission.
Pluto with a thicker atmosphere. Copyright 1996 Don Davis. Used by permission.

Space artist Don Davis has been working up some visionary views of Pluto, along with his own take on the Pluto postage stamp we’re all dreaming of having someday.  I also like his moody view of the Sun (at right), peeking out from around Pluto as it would have looked in 1996, when Pluto was closer to the Sun and its atmosphere was a bit more “puffed out”.

Also, check out space artist Ron Miller’s paintings of planetary objects, including Pluto, at Black Cat Studios. I’ve long admired his work, and he does a great job in depicting distant worlds with uncanny realism.

I’m sure there’ll be more Pluto art coming in the next few days.  I’m loving all of it and thank all the talented folk who are showing us the “art” in space art, space music, and music videos!

 

 

New Horizons mission, Pluto

The Two Very Different Sides of Pluto

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Color Images Show Amazing Features

Color images released on July 1, 2015, show very different faces of this distant world. The image on the left is the hemisphere New Horizons will encounter first, and the one on the right is the opposing side. Courtesy NASA/New Horizons/JHU-APL

Just when you thought Pluto couldn’t surprise you more, here come images of its two hemispheres, showing very different landscape markings. The image on the left is what New Horizons will see first during the encounter, and it seems to have a good mix of dark and light features on the surface.

That image on the right, though — whoa! What looks  like four evenly-spaced “somethings” along the limb (which is the equator). And a sort of dark crescent up above that? Craters? Hills? Canyons? What could they be? The answer to that will be tantalizing the New Horizons team until the next images show up. It’s safe to say, nobody’s seen anything quite like these views before and Pluto is definitely giving us something to think about.

Also, notice how much more colorful Pluto is compared to its companion world, Charon, which is darker and grayer. What’s up with that?  In another 13 days or so, we’ll know even more than we know today. But, for now, the glimpses are just getting more tantalizing even as the view clears up. Clearly, Pluto is not a frozen dead world. Its atmosphere is still there (that is,  it hasn’t frozen out yet, which will happen as the dwarf planet gets farther away from the Sun), and the different terrains and bright-and-dark markings are telling us that Pluto still has many surprises to deliver.