Pluto and Beyond!

Do you remember where you were on January 19^th, 2006 at 14:00 EST? Unless you have an extremely detailed journaling addiction, I’m guessing you don’t. If you have a fondness for a certain celestial object, however, you just might. You see, on that fateful day the New Horizons probe launched on a journey to Pluto and the mysterious Kuiper Belt. If you have been following New Horizon’s progress through the solar system, complete with a gravity assist from Jupiter, you are in for a treat. In an epic case of delayed gratification, New Horizons is finally going to make its close encounter with Pluto, plus its five moons, in just a few days on July 14^th.

Why is this exciting you ask? Well beyond satisfying the innate human desire to explore strange new worlds, the encounter with Pluto is epic because we know so little about it. Discovered in 1930 and billions of miles from Earth, Pluto is essentially a blank spot in our knowledge. As Pluto comes into focus, everything we learn is brand new. Even better, once New Horizons passes Pluto, it will go on to other objects in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud while exploring the icy ‘third zone’ of our solar system. To be honest, I’m not totally sure what many of those terms mean, but I love it when actual science starts sounding like an episode of Star Trek. Fingers crossed that we can start talking about the Delta Quadrant and the Delphic Expanse soon.

The one disadvantage to all this newness is trying to find current information on Pluto in book form. The library does have some great books on Pluto, but they are a little dated. This isn’t because we aren’t buying new books on the topic; it’s just that they haven’t been written yet. Once New Horizons sends back its data, new books are sure to appear on our shelves. Until then, you will have better luck using our magazine resources to find the latest articles about Pluto and New Horizons.  Our two major magazine databases are EBSCO and Proquest which are easy to search and include many science-related journals. You will also want to check out our new digital magazine services, Flipster and Zino, which have full issues of several science and technology magazines.

Of course, for immediacy it is hard to beat the Internet. Luckily, there are plenty of great sites to keep you up to date on New Horizons and its discoveries. There are two major websites for the New Horizons Mission. One is based at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the other is based at NASA.  Both are chock full of current information, including the latest data, photos and timeline for the mission as well as a spiffy countdown clock to the closest approach.  If you feel like getting social there are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts and even a Pluto Time feature where you can share photos of the exact brief time on earth when the sunlight matches that on Pluto at high noon. Also, be sure to hang on to all those web and social media links beyond the July 14^th fly by. New Horizons is way out there, with data taking a long time to get back to Earth, so new information should be coming in months after the initial encounter.

So take a little time this July 14^th to think of distant Pluto and all of the brand spanking new information we will finally be getting about the formerly mysterious Planet X. Go, New Horizons, Go!