Earth and Moon imaged from Cassini on July 19, 2013
Did you smile and wave at Saturn on Friday? If you did (and even if you didn’t) here’s how you — and everyone else on Earth — looked to the Cassini spacecraft, 898.4 million miles away.
Hope you didn’t blink!
The image above is a color-composite made from raw images acquired by Cassini in red, green, and blue visible light wavelengths. Some of the specks around the edges are background stars, and others are the result of high-energy particle noise, of which some have been digitally removed.
The Moon is the bright dot just below and to the left of Earth. (An original raw image can be seen here.)
Cassini acquired the images while capturing views of Saturn in eclipse against the Sun between 22:24:00 UTC on July 19 and 02:43:00 UTC on July 20 (6:24 to 10:43 pm EDT July 19.) On Cassini time, the Earth imaging took place between 22:47:13 UTC (6:47:13 pm EDT) and 23:01:56 UTC (7:01:56 pm EDT) on the 19th.
Full mosaic arrangement acquired by Cassini on July 19-20 UTC. Earth was positioned just below the planet. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)
The world was invited to “Wave at Saturn” beginning 5:27 pm EDT on Friday — which allowed enough time for the photons from a waving world to actually reach Cassini’s camera just beyond Saturn, 1.44 billion kilometers away. (Did you wave? I did!) It was the first time Earth’s population was made aware beforehand that their picture would be taken from such a cosmic distance.
A crowd gathered on the mall at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to wave at Saturn on July 19 (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The image of our planet and moon, seen as merely a couple of bright points of light against the blackness of space, recalls Sagan’s poignant “pale blue dot” passage from Cosmos…
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The “pale blue dot” of Earth captured by Voyager 1 in Feb. 1990 (NASA/JPL)
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
— Carl Sagan (1934–1996)
A full mosaic of Cassini’s imaging of Saturn silhouetted against the Sun is expected in the coming weeks.
UPDATE: Here’s another RGB color composite, made from raw images acquired with Cassini’s wide-angle camera. It shows a view of Saturn and the rings in eclipse as seen from below and behind, backlit by the Sun. Earth is the bright point light near the center. (See original here.)
Raw image (RGB composite) of Saturn in eclipse with Earth in the distance — just a pale blue dot. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI. Composite by J. Major.)
Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. Composites by Jason Major.
Just one of the many images from Cassini used to make up "Around Saturn"
In honor of this today’s Wave at Saturn and The Day the Earth Smiled events, celebrating images to be taken of Earth from Saturn, here’s a wonderful movie showing highlights from Cassini’s exploration of the giant planet, its magnificent rings, and fascinating family of moons.
Assembled by Fabio Di Donato in memory of astrophysicist, author and activist Margherita Hack, who passed away June 29 at the age of 91, this video is an impressive tour of the Saturnian system — and a truly stunning tribute as well.
“She made me love the stars,” Fabio wrote.
This video shows a selection from more than 200,000 pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft around Saturn’s rings in a period between 2005 and 2013. RAW images were processed to PNG thanks to the Vicar-to-PNG procedure provided by Jessica McKellar.
The music is Jazz Suite No.2: VI Waltz 2 by Shostakovich, performed by the Armonie Symphony Orchestra.
As always, you can see the latest images and news from the Cassini mission here, and find out how your photo is going to be taken from 900 million miles away (and also 60 million miles away from Mercury!) here.
Video: Fabio Di Donato. Original images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI.
P.S.: Want to get a personalized certificate saying you “Waved at Saturn?” Click here.
Comet ISON seen against a background of stars and galaxies (Source: /hubblesite.org)
This image of the steadily-approaching Comet ISON, made from observations with the Hubble Space Telescope on April 30, show not only the comet itself but also a rich background of stars located within our own galaxy and even the distant spirals of entire galaxies much, much farther away — as Josh Sokol describes it on HubbleSite.org’s ISONblog it’s like the astronomy stickers you’d get for your kid’s bedroom, except you’d never get to see such a scene in real life “unless, of course, you had Hubble.”
Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) is currently on its way into the inner Solar System on course for a close encounter with the Sun, zooming along at 77,250 km/h (48,000 miles per hour). It will make its closest pass by the Sun on November 28 (coming within just .012 AU) and will hopefully put on a pretty spectacular show in the night sky — especially if it survives the trip.
Comet ISON’s projected path through the night sky prior to perihelion. (Credit: NASA/GSFC/Axel Mellinger)
The image above was created from multiple Hubble observations earlier this year, some geared toward capturing ISON and others calibrated more for distant, dimmer objects like galaxies and far-flung stars. By combining the results we get a view of a comet speeding through space with an almost too-perfect hyperrealism, courtesy of NASA’s hardest-working space telescope.
“The result is part science, part art. It’s a simulation of what our eyes, with their ability to dynamically adjust to brighter and fainter objects, would see if we could look up at the heavens with the resolution of Hubble. The result is a hodepodge of almost all the meat-and-potatoes subjects of astronomy – no glow-in-the-dark stickers required.”
IBEX observations of spectral slope, where red and yellow indicate lower energy particles and green and blue higher energy ones. The central portion (circle) is looking down the heliotail and shows two lower energy “lobes” on the port and starboard sides and high energy regions at higher northern and southern latitudes.
Figure taken from McComas et al. , Astrophysical Journal, 2013.
Our Solar System is moving through interstellar space and scientists have long thought that the “bubble” around our Solar System – called the heliosphere – might have a tail, similar to how a comet has a tail or how other stars have astrospheres. But that has all been conjecture…. until now.
The IBEX spacecraft (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) has now seen the tail and has mapped out its structure. IBEX scientists were surprised to see the tail has twists and turns, with four separate “lobes,” making it appear somewhat like a four-leaf clover. This downwind region of the heliosphere is called the heliotail.
“Scientists have always presumed that the heliosphere had a tail,” said Eric Christian, IBEX mission scientist, speaking during a Google+ Hangout announcing the new findings. “But this is actually the first real data that we have to give us the shape of the tail.”
IBEX measures the neutral particles created by collisions at the solar system’s boundaries. This technique, called energetic neutral atom imaging, relies on the fact that the paths of neutral particles are not affected by the solar magnetic field. Instead, the particles travel in a straight line from collision to IBEX. Consequently, observing where the neutral particles came from describes what is going on in these distant regions.
“By collecting these energetic neutral atoms, IBEX provides maps of the original charged particles,” said David McComas, lead author on the team’s paper and principal investigator for IBEX at Southwest Research Institute. “The structures in the heliotail are invisible to our eyes, but we can use this trick to remotely image the outermost regions of our heliosphere.”
What they found was unexpected, McComas said.
“By very carefully assembling the statistical observations from the first three years of IBEX data we’ve been able to fill in what we couldn’t see before,” McComas said during the Hangout, “and what we found was that the heliotail was a much larger structure with a much more interesting configuration.
What they found was a tail that appears to have a combination of fast and slow moving particles. There are two lobes of slower particles on the sides, with faster particles above and below. The entire structure is twisted from the pushing and pulling of magnetic fields outside the solar system. McComas likened it to a how a beach ball might twist around if it was attached to a bungee cord.
The IBEX scientists speaking during the Hangout today said this new information will help us understand what the Voyager spacecraft may encounter as they reach the edge of our Solar System.
“IBEX and Voyager are incredibly complimentary missions,” said Christian. “I’ve often said that IBEX is like an MRI, where it can take an image to understand the big picture of what is going on, where the Voyagers are like biopsies, where we can see what is going on in the local area.”
This was the first time a NASA used a Google+ Hangout to broadcast a press briefing. You can watch the full Hangout below:
You can read David McComas’ blog post on the new findings here, and NASA’s press release here.
Saturn's rings. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
It’s been 9 years (to the day, in fact) since the Cassini spacecraft first entered orbit around Saturn and ever since it has been sending a steady stream of incredible images from the ringed planet back to Earth, bridging the 900-million-mile distance with countlesswonders and groundbreaking discoveries. The views Cassini has provided us of Saturn and its family of moons are unparalleled and unprecedented, but something one could remain in want of is the element of motion: Cassini’s cameras are designed to capture still images, not true video, and thus most of our best views of Saturn are static shots.
That’s where filmmaker Stephen van Vuuren and his current project, “In Saturn’s Rings,” comes in.
An award-winning filmmaker, musician, and photographer (and self-confessed übergeek) from South Africa, Stephen van Vuuren has spent the last several years compiling hundreds of thousands of images acquired by Cassini — as well as other exploration spacecraft — into a single high-definition feature film, one that will allow viewers to experience the beauty, grandeur, and reality of the Solar System like never before.
“In Saturn’s Rings” (formerly “Outside In”) is slated for release in IMAX theaters, planetariums, and museums in the spring of 2014 — and the first official teaser trailer is below, released today. Check it out (or visit the YouTube page to watch in original, eye-melting 4k high-resolution):
“‘In Saturn’s Rings’ is a film that’s both personal and universal, experimental and sincere, science and spirit , non-narrative and documentary. The goal is to use large screen imagery, synchronized to powerful but moving music, to create an experience for those who see it, hear it and feel it.”
– “In Saturn’s Rings” official website
This is one film that I’ll be eagerly looking forward to over the next few months, without a doubt!
Read more on van Vuuren’s official film site here, and check out a full minute of film footage (originally released in 2011) on Vimeo here. Also, you can keep up with updates on the movie’s Twitter and Facebook pages.
Mosaic of Saturn seen in eclipse in September 2006. Earth is the bright dot just inside the F ring at upper left. (CICLOPS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)
Citizens of Earth, get ready for your Cassini close-up: once again the spacecraft is preparing to capture images of Saturn positioned between it and the Sun, allowing for incredible views of the ring system and its atmosphere — and also a tiny “pale blue dot” in the distance we call home.
Earth seen from Cassini (NASA/JPL/SSI)
The mosaic above was composed of images captured during such an eclipse event in September 2006, and quickly became an astronomical sensation. It’s not often we get an idea of what we look like from so far away, and seeing our entire world represented as a small speck of light nestled between Saturn’s rings is, to me anyway, both impressive and humbling.
Humbling because of how small we look, but impressive because as a species we have found a way to do it.
And next month, on Friday, July 19 between 21:27 and 21:42 UTC (5:27 – 5:42 p.m. EDT) Cassini will do it again.
“Ever since we caught sight of the Earth among the rings of Saturn in September 2006 in a mosaic that has become one of Cassini’s most beloved images, I have wanted to do it all over again, only better,” said Cassini imaging team leader, Carolyn Porco. “And this time, I wanted to turn the entire event into an opportunity for everyone around the globe, at the same time, to savor the uniqueness of our beautiful blue-ocean planet and the preciousness of the life on it.”
Porco was involved in co-initiating and executing the famous “Pale Blue Dot” image of Earth taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 from beyond the orbit of Neptune in 1990.
“It will be a day for all the world to celebrate,” she said.
The intent for the upcoming mosaic is to capture the whole scene, Earth and Saturn’s rings from one end to the other, in Cassini’s red, green and blue filters that can be composited to form a natural color view of what our eyes might see at Saturn. Earth and the Moon will also be imaged with a high resolution camera — something not yet done by Cassini.
We can all consider ourselves pretty lucky, too… this is the first time in history that we humans will know in advance that our picture is going to be taken from nearly a billion miles away.
“While Earth will be only about a pixel in size from Cassini’s vantage point 898 million miles [1.44 billion kilometers] away, the Cassini team is looking forward to giving the world a chance to see what their home looks like from Saturn,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “With this advance notice, we hope you’ll join us in waving at Saturn from Earth, so we can commemorate this special opportunity.”
So on July 19, remember to look up and wave… Cassini will be watching!
Read more on the CICLOPS news release here and on the NASA/JPL Cassini mission site here.
“That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives… There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.”
Over the past six years wind speeds in Venus' atmosphere have been steadily rising (ESA)
High-altitude winds on neighboring Venus have long been known to be quite speedy, whipping sulfuric-acid-laden clouds around the superheated planet at speeds well over 300 km/h (180 mph). And after over six years collecting data from orbit, ESA’s Venus Express has found that the winds there are steadily getting faster… and scientists really don’t know why.
Cloud structures in Venus’ atmosphere, seen by Venus Express’ Ultraviolet, Visible and Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIRTIS) in 2007 (ESA)
By tracking the movements of distinct features in Venus’ cloud tops at an altitude of 70 km (43 miles) over a period of six years — which is 10 of Venus’ years — scientists have been able to monitor patterns in long-term global wind speeds.
What two separate studies have found is a rising trend in high-altitude wind speeds in a broad swath south of Venus’ equator, from around 300 km/h when Venus Express first entered orbit in 2006 to 400 km/h (250 mph) in 2012. That’s nearly double the wind speeds found in a category 4 hurricane here on Earth!
“This is an enormous increase in the already high wind speeds known in the atmosphere. Such a large variation has never before been observed on Venus, and we do not yet understand why this occurred,” said Igor Khatuntsev from the Space Research Institute in Moscow and lead author of a paper to be published in the journal Icarus.
Long-term studies based on tracking the motions of several hundred thousand cloud features, indicated here with arrows and ovals, reveal that the average wind speeds on Venus have increased from roughly 300 km/h to 400 km/h over the first six years of the mission. (Khatuntsev et al.)
A complementary Japanese-led study used a different tracking method to determine cloud motions, which arrived at similar results… as well as found other wind variations at lower altitudes in Venus’ southern hemisphere.
“Our analysis of cloud motions at low latitudes in the southern hemisphere showed that over the six years of study the velocity of the winds changed by up 70 km/h over a time scale of 255 Earth days – slightly longer than a year on Venus,” said Toru Kouyama from Japan’s Information Technology Research Institute. (Their results are to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.)
Both teams also identified daily wind speed variations on Venus, along with shifting wave patterns that suggest “upwelling motions in the morning at low latitudes and downwelling flow in the afternoon.” (via Cloud level winds from the Venus Express Monitoring Camera imaging, Khatuntsev et al.)
A day on Venus is longer than its year, as the planet takes 243 Earth days to complete a single rotation on its axis. Its atmosphere spins around it much more quickly than its surface rotates — a curious feature known as super-rotation.
“The atmospheric super-rotation of Venus is one of the great unexplained mysteries of the Solar System,” said ESA’s Venus Express Project Scientist Håkan Svedhem. “These results add more mystery to it, as Venus Express continues to surprise us with its ongoing observations of this dynamic, changing planet.”
A ladder-like structure in Saturn's F ring seen by Cassini on Feb. 13, 2013 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)
Saturn’s F ring is certainly a curious structure. Orbiting the giant planet 82,000 kilometers above its equatorial cloud tops, the F ring is a ropy, twisted belt of bright ice particles anywhere from 30-500 km wide. It can appear as a solid band or a series of braided cords surrounded by a misty haze, and often exhibits clumps and streamers created by the gravitational influence of embedded moonlets or passing shepherd moons.
In the picture above, acquired by the Cassini spacecraft on Feb. 13, 2013 and released on May 27, we see a section of the F ring separated into long ropes and spanned by connecting bands of bright material — the “ladder” structure suggested in the title.
Scientists believe that interactions between the F ring and the moons Prometheus and Pandora cause the dynamic structure of the F ring. (Watch an animation of the F ring and shepherd moons here.)
Made of particles of water ice finer than cigarette smoke, the F ring orbits Saturn beyond the outer edge of the A ring across the expanse of the 2,600-km-wide Roche Division. In these images, Saturn and the main ring systems are off frame to the left.
Detail of ladder structure in the F ring
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 32 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera (NAC).
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 426,000 miles (686,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a phase angle of 162 degrees. Image scale is 2 miles (4 kilometers) per pixel.
An artist's conception of two tidally locked objects orbiting the Sun from afar. The system: 2010 WG9 may likely look like this. Credit: zmescience
What if we could journey to the outer edge of the Solar System – beyond the familiar rocky planets and the gas giants, past the orbits of asteroids and comets – one thousand times further still – to the spherical shell of icy particles that enshrouds the Solar System. This shell, more commonly known as the Oort cloud, is believed to be a remnant of the early Solar System.
Imagine what astronomers could learn about the early Solar System by sending a probe to the Oort cloud! Unfortunately 1-2 light years is more than a little beyond our reach. But we’re not entirely out of luck. 2010 WG9 – a trans-Neptunian object — is actually an Oort Cloud object in disguise. It has been kicked out of its orbit, and is heading closer towards us so we can get an unprecedented look.
But it gets even better! 2010 WG9 won’t get close to the Sun, meaning that its icy surface will remain well-preserved. Dr. David Rabinowitz, lead author of a paper about the ongoing observations of this object told Universe Today, “This is one of the Holy Grails of Planetary Science – to observe an unaltered planetesimal left over from the time of Solar System formation.”
Now you might be thinking: wait, don’t comets come from the Oort Cloud? It’s true; most comets were pulled out of the Oort cloud by a gravitational disturbance. But observing comets is extremely difficult, as they are surrounded by bright clouds of dust and gas. They also come much closer to the Sun, meaning that their ices evaporate and their original surface is not preserved.
So while there is a surprisingly high number of Oort cloud objects hanging out within the inner solar system, we needed to find one that is easy to observe and whose surface is well preserved. 2010 WG9 is just the object for the job! It is not covered by dust or gas, and is believed to have spent most of its lifetime at distances greater than 1000 AU. In fact, it will never approach closer than Uranus.
Astronomers at Yale University have observed 2010 WG9 for over two years, taking images in different filters. Just as coffee filters allow ground coffee to pass through but will block larger coffee beans, astronomical filters allow certain wavelengths of light to pass through, while blocking all others.
Recall that the wavelength of visible light relates to color. The color red, for example, has a wavelength of approximately 650 nm. An object that is very red will therefore be brighter in a filter of this wavelength, as opposed to a filter of, say, 475 nm, or blue. The use of filters allow astronomers to study specific colors of light.
Astronomers observed 2010 WG9 with four filters: B, V, R, and I, also known as blue, visible, red, and infrared wavelengths. What did they see? Variation – a change in color over the course of just days.
The likely source is a patchy surface. Imagine looking at the Earth (pretend there’s no atmosphere) with a blue filter. It would brighten when an ocean came into view, and dim when that ocean left the field of view. There would be a variation in color, dependent on the different elements located on the surface of the planet.
The dwarf planet Pluto has patches of methane ice, which also show up as color variations on its surface. Unlike Pluto, 2010 WG9 is relatively small (100 km in diameter) and cannot hold on to its methane ice. It’s possible that part of the surface is newly exposed after an impact. According to Rabinowitz, astronomers are still unsure what the color variations mean.
Rabinowitz was very keen to explain that 2010 WG9 has an unusually slow rotation. Most trans-Neptunian objects rotate every few hours. 2010 WG9 rotates on the order of 11 days! The best reason for this discrepancy is that it exists in a binary system. If 2010 WG9 is tidally locked to another body — meaning that the spin of each body is locked to the rate of rotation — then 2010 WG9 will be slowed down in its rotation.
According to Rabinowitz, the next step will be to observe 2010 WG9 with larger telescopes — perhaps the Hubble Space Telescope — in order to better measure the color variation. We may even be able to determine if this object is in a binary system after all, and observe the secondary object as well.
Any future observations will help us further understand the Oort cloud. “Very little is known about the Oort cloud – how many objects are in it, what are its dimensions, and how it formed,” Rabinowitz explained. “By studying the detailed properties of a newly arrived member of the Oort cloud, we may learn about its constituents.”
2010 WG9 will likely hint at the origin of the Solar System in helping us further understand its own origin: the mysterious Oort cloud.
I’m just going to warn you, this is a controversial topic. Some people get pretty grumpy when you ask: how many planets are in the Solar System? Is it eight, ten, or more?
I promise you this, though, we’re never going back to nine planets… ever.
When many of us grew up, there were nine planets in the Solar System. It was like a fixed point in our brains.
As kids, memorizing this list was an early right of passage of nerd pride: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
But then in 2005, Mike Brown discovered Eris, an icy object thought to be about the same size as Pluto, out beyond its orbit.
That would bring the total number of planets to ten. Right? There’s no turning back, textbooks would need to be changed.
In order to settle the dispute, the International Astronomical Union met in 2006, and argued for, and against Pluto’s planethood. Some astronomers advocated widening the number of planets to twelve, including Pluto, its moon Charon, the Asteroid Ceres, and the newly discovered Eris.
In the end, they changed the definition of what makes a planet, and sadly, Pluto doesn’t make the cut:
Here are the new requirements of planethood status:
A planet has to orbit the Sun. Okay fine, Pluto does that.
A planet needs enough gravity to pull itself into a sphere. Okay, spherical. Pluto’s fine there too.
A planet needs to have cleared out its orbit of other objects. Uh oh, Pluto hasn’t done that.
For example, planet Earth accounts for a million times the rest of the material in its orbit, while Pluto is just a fraction of the icy objects in its realm.
The final decision was to demote Pluto from planet to dwarf planet.
But don’t despair, Pluto is in good company.
Ceres. Image credit: NASAThere’s Ceres, the first asteroid ever discovered, and the smallest of the dwarf planets. The surface of Ceres is made of ice and rock, and it might even have a liquid ocean under its surface. NASA’s Dawn mission is flying there right now to give us close up pictures for the first time.
Haumea, named after the Hawaiian goddess of fertility, is about a third the mass of Pluto, and has just enough gravity to pull itself into an ellipsoid, or egg shape. Even though it’s smaller, it’s got moons of its own.
Makemake. Credit: NASAMakemake, a much larger Kuiper belt object, has a diameter about two-thirds the size of Pluto. It was discovered in 2005 by Mike Brown and his team. So far, Makemake doesn’t seem to have any moons.
Eris is the most massive known dwarf planet, and the one that helped turn our definition of a planet upside-down. It’s 27% more massive than Pluto and the ninth most massive body that orbits the Sun. It even has a moon: Dysnomia.
Pluto. Credit: ESOAnd of course, Pluto. The founding member of the dwarf family.
Want an easy way to remember the eight planets, in order? Just remember this mnemonic: my very excellent mother just served us noodles.
For all you currently writing angry tweets to Mike Brown, hold on a sec. Changing Pluto’s categorization is an important step that really needed to happen.
The more we discover about our Universe, the more we realize just how strange and wonderful it is. When Pluto was discovered 80 years ago, we never could have expected the variety of objects in the Solar System. Categorizing Pluto as a dwarf planet helps us better describe our celestial home.
So, our Solar System now has eight planets, and five dwarf planets.
