Pluto The Pup

Don’t forget to head over to stonedgazers.blogspot.co.uk Artist’s impression of how the surface of Pluto might look, according to one of the two models that a team of astronomers has developed to account for the observed properties of Pluto’s atmosphere, as studied with CRIRES. The video shows patches of pure methane on the surface. At the distance of Pluto, the Sun appears about 1000 times fainter than on Earth. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Science & Reason on Facebook: tinyurl.com Hubble’s Universe Unfiltered 15: Changing Views of Pluto While it may seem that the astronomy community’s views on Pluto changed radically with its reclassification in 2006, the truth is that our understanding of Pluto has always been shifting. This small, icy world in the distant reaches of the solar system is so difficult to observe that, even with Hubble’s keen resolution, it only shows up as a few pixels in an image. Only with patience, lots of observations, and huge amounts of computing power have we been able to create approximate surface maps of Pluto and discover some surprising alterations to its surface. Improved imagery yields improved insight. We now comprehend Pluto’s place within the solar system, and the exploration of that region has really just begun. Hubble’s Universe Unfiltered is a collection of video podcasts. Each episode offers an in-depth explanation of the latest news story or image from the Hubble Space Telescope, presented by astronomer Frank Summers. — Please subscribe to Science & Reason: • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com — NOTES * In the video podcast, I jokingly refer to “Percival Lowell’s Greatest Mistakes” being 1.) the claim that Mars had a civilization using canals, and 2.) the prediction of a large planet beyond Neptune. Some may recognize this phrasing as an oblique reference to similar wording used in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker series. (If you’re going …