Cassi Creek: still
more stellar amusement
“Spacecraft en route to Pluto spots its largest moon
NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has spotted Pluto’s
Texas-sized, ice-covered moon Charon for the first time.
NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft, using its
highest-resolution telescopic camera, has spotted Pluto’s Texas-sized,
ice-covered moon Charon for the first time. This represents a major milestone
on the spacecraft’s 9½-year journey to conduct the initial reconnaissance of
the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt and, in a sense, begins the mission’s
long-range study of the Pluto system.
The largest of Pluto’s five known moons, Charon orbits about
12,000 miles (more than 19,000 kilometers) away from Pluto itself. As seen from
New Horizons, that’s only about 0.01 degrees away”
“A beautiful end to a star’s life
X-rays from the Chandra X-ray
Observatory (pink) shows superheated gas around the dense, hot core of an aging
star.”
“Another supermoon coming up on July 22”
“Standing
on the moon
Where talk is cheap and vision true
Standing on the moon
But I would rather be with you
Somewhere in San Francisco
On a back porch in July
Just looking up to heaven
At this crescent in the sky”
Where talk is cheap and vision true
Standing on the moon
But I would rather be with you
Somewhere in San Francisco
On a back porch in July
Just looking up to heaven
At this crescent in the sky”
The outstanding successes that NASA has achieved would be
immensely spectacular if they all took place here on Earth or in near-Earth space. That they take place over distances ranging
from a single AU to beyond the solar system and into inter stellar space, over
a period of years to decades it becomes even more impressive.
If only we
could bring the same degree of common purpose to the resolution of our
socio-economic problems.
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