Valley astronomers delighted by Pluto flyby

Central San Joaquin Valley astronomers expressed delight Wednesday at the photos coming back from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it made its close approach to Pluto after its decade-long 3-billion-mile journey.

“They’re discovering some amazing things about Pluto,” said Steve Harness, secretary/treasurer of Central Valley Astronomers and a NASA ambassador. “”It’s bigger than they thought it’d be and there’s geological processes going on as opposed to it being a dead lump of rock. My hope is that since it’s an active body it might become a planet again.”

The icy world was notoriously stripped of its planetary status by the International Astronomical Union in August of 2006, seven months after New Horizons was launched. That fact has not dampened the excitement of local astronomers, who are eager to see the former planet as they’ve never been able to before.

“If you tried to find Pluto with a telescope, it would look like a small, faint little star,” said Chad Quandt, president of Central Valley Astronomers. “Even Hubble wasn’t able to show it in any detail. New Horizons is our first chance to see it up close.”

Harness finds NASA’s achievement with New Horizons all the more impressive because of the spacecraft’s limited technology.

“Your smart phone is more advanced than the computer system on New Horizons,” said Harness. “I always marvel at the engineering involved in accomplishing something like this.”

Harness’ colleagues seemed equally impressed with the space agency’s ability to do so much with so little.

“They were basically able to thread a cosmic needle when they launched New Horizons all those years ago and fly it by Pluto yesterday,” Steve Britton, vice president of Central Valley Astronomers, said Wednesday. “And they did it all with technology that is primitive compared with what we have today.”

Beyond scientific achievements, New Horizons is a source of wonder to those like Britton, who have their eyes cast to the heavens.

“When we look at things through a telescope on earth we don’t get the rich detail, it doesn’t do justice to what we’re looking at the way the images from New Horizons do,” said Britton. “It’s awe-inspiring.”

This story was originally published July 15, 2015 at 2:03 PM with the headline "Valley astronomers delighted by Pluto flyby."