Are you ready for the Plutonian system? After more than nine years in route the New Horizons spacecraft will be arriving at Pluto and it’s moons on July 14, 2015. The excitement is building for this historic occasion and the secrets unlocked by New Horizons will surely prove remarkable. At this writing we are 20 days away!
New Horizons Spacecraft and instruments.
The Spacecraft instruments will be searching for answers such as: what Pluto’s atmosphere is made of, how the planet itself behaves, what the surface of Pluto looks like and how the solar wind interacts with Pluto’s atmosphere?
The largest object located in the main asteroid belt (between Mars and Jupiter) is the dwarf planet named Ceres. At 590 miles across and with it’s spherical shape Ceres was once referred to as a planet. It’s probably the planet you’ve never heard of and over time it was demoted to asteroid status until 2006 when it was properly branded a “dwarf planet” by the IAU. This mysterious and elusive world was discovered in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, an Italian Catholic priest, mathematician, and astronomer.
Current amateur astronomy information such as points of interest and events in the night sky, star party dates, educational information, telescopes buying tips and much more.
