The background image is the full frame of the area Pluto was in. The two inset images are the before and after images and are enlargements of the area near the top and a little to the right of center. Look for the little equilateral triangle in all three images to identify the spot.

Ps. 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

By Jim Bonser (jbonser@usa.net

Every month in ‘Touring the Skies’ I share with you where the bright naked eye planets are in the sky. Sometimes, I’ll share about a prominent constellation or maybe talk in depth about the moon or a bright comet. I do this because I love sharing the wonder and amazement I feel every time I stand outside on a dark, clear night and look up to take in the beauty as well as the awe I feel gazing into the night sky. The more I learn about the vast distances and incredible variety of objects that populate the universe the more I am in awe of the God who I believe personally created all of it. I know, many believe that nothing exploded and became everything, and if you prefer to believe in that you are certainly free to do so and I hope you will afford me the same freedom. Believing that we live in a created solar system within a created universe, that a clockwork universe was created by a clock maker rather than merely the product of happy, random chance is simply more reasonable to me. I’d like to begin our tour this month with an object that I think is a perfect example of what I mean. I’d like to talk a little about Pluto and an amazing little spacecraft called ‘New Horizons’ that was sent to study it. According to NASA, “New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006; it swung past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and conducted a six-month-long reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto and its moons in summer 2015, culminating with Pluto closest approach on July 14, 2015.” The images and information New Horizons returned stunned astronomers. Mountains made of ice, totally unexpected, incredible surface features that defy explanations under a theory that proposes that the solar system is 4.5+ billion years old. Where are the craters? Where could the thermal energy come from to create geological activity on a world that should have lost all energy and froze solid billions of years ago? On the other hand, the information New Horizons revealed fit quite well with a solar system is only thousands, not billions of years old. On the night of July 14/15 2016, the one-year anniversary of the historic flyby of New Horizons at Pluto, and in spite of the fact that the moon was 78% lit and only about 48 degrees to the west of Pluto, I was out in my observatory with the primary objective of imaging the far away world for myself. Obviously, my equipment would not reveal any details like Tombaugh Reggio or Pluto’s Heart. For spectacular images of these features and more, I encourage you to visit the NASA New Horizons mission web page and especially the ‘Top Ten’ images page at: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-top-10-pluto-pics. Prepare to be blown away by this so called, “Dwarf Planet”, it has “Giant Features” that will have you picking up your jaw off the floor again and again. Anyway, back to me and my observatory. As the sky gradually darkened, I readied my modest equipment: a Losmandy G11 German equatorial mount, an 80mm guide scope and an 8” Ritchey-Chretien design telescope mounted side by side on the G11, and a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi DSLR camera. I opened the observatory roof and fired up the computer and camera equipment and started the apps to control everything and for a change, everything seemed to be working just fine! My plan was to take a series of images where Pluto was predicted to be by Sky and Telescope and my favorite computer planetarium program, TheSky ver. 6, then take pictures of something else for an hour or so and then return to take some more images of the area around Pluto. By comparing the two sets of images taken an hour apart, I should be able to identify Pluto as ‘the little star that moved’ just like Clyde Tombaugh did back on February 18, 1930. I took my first series of 7 90 second exposures beginning at 11:37 p.m. on 7/14. I then worked to refine the polar alignment of my mount because I noticed some drift in the individual images and to increase the pointing accuracy of the mount. After an hour or so, at about 12:50 a.m. I repointed the scope towards Pluto and then centered the field so it was exactly the same as the earlier run and took 10 more 90 second images. Clouds and fog had begun to roll in so I felt very happy to be able to get the second series before the sky was completely lost to the clouds. The final images turned out even better than I had hoped and the mobile little Pluto is easy to pick out in the two final stacked images. Pluto is an incredible place and will be challenging astronomers for a long time to come. It is a challenging object to find but I hope you too will someday get to see it personally through a telescope! Meanwhile, do take a few minutes to explore the NASA New Horizons website. As Star Trek’s Mr. Spock would say, it is “fascinating!” Clear Skies!