Eastward charon full#
Eastward charon pro#

The location of Pluto in relation to the rising Full Moon on the night of June 21st. Lacking a telescope? Hey, so are we, as we trek through Morocco this summer… never fear, you can still wave in the general direction of Pluto and New Horizons on the evening of June 21 st, one day after the northward solstice and the Full Moon, which passes three degrees north of Pluto. Pluto: imaged last year during New Horizons’ historic encounter. We once nabbed Pluto during public viewing using the 14” reflector at the Flandrau observatory.Īnd how about Pluto’s large moon, Charon? Shining at an even fainter +16th magnitude, Charon never strays more than 0.9” from Pluto… still, diligent amateurs have indeed caught the elusive moon… as did Wendy Clark just last year. Image credit and copyright: Shahrin Ahmad often see Pluto quoted as visible in a telescope aperture of ‘six inches or larger,’ but for the coming decade, we feel this should be amended to 8 inches and up. The inner and outermost planet(?) Mercury meets Pluto earlier this year in January. See Mars over in the constellation Libra shining at magnitude -1.5? It’s 100^3 (a 5-fold change in magnitude is equal to a factor of 100 in brightness), or over a million times brighter than Pluto. Had Pluto been near aphelion in the 20 th century rather than headed towards perihelion, it might have waited much longer for discovery.Ģ016 sees Pluto shining at +14.1, one magnitude (2.5 times) above the usual quoted mean. This also means that Pluto near opposition can range from a favorable magnitude +13.7 near perihelion, to three magnitudes (16 times) fainter near aphelion hovering around magnitude +16.3. Pluto is in a fairly eccentric orbit, ranging from 29.7 astronomical units (AU) to 49.4 AU from the Sun. The reason: Pluto passed perihelion or its closest point to the Sun in 1989 inside the orbit of Neptune, and it’s now headed out to aphelion about a century from now in 2114.

Eastward charon pro#

Image credit: Starry Night Pro 7.Īnd Pluto is getting tougher to catch in a backyard scope, as well. Note the position of New Horizons and KBO 2014 MU69 at the end of the year thrown in as well. A close up look at the path of Pluto for the remainder of 2016. Here we are 86 years later, and Pluto has only moved six zodiacal constellations along the ecliptic eastward in its 248 year orbit around the Sun. Fun fact: astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto as it drifted through the constellation Gemini in 1930. Pluto actually crossed the plane of the galactic equator in 2009, and won’t cross the celestial equator northward until 2109. Image credit: Starry Night Education Software. Opposition occurs on July 7th, when Pluto rises opposite from the setting Sun and rides across the meridian at 29 degrees above the southern horizon for observers based along 40 degrees north latitude at local midnight. Hovering around declination 21 degrees south, +14.1 magnitude Pluto is higher in the June skies for observers in the southern hemisphere than the northern, but don’t let that stop you from trying. Opposition 2016 sees the remote world looping through the star-rich fields of eastern Sagittarius. We now live in an era where Pluto and its massive moon Charon are a known worlds, something that even Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh never got to see.Īnd this summer, with a little skill and patience and a good-sized telescope, you can see Pluto for yourself. If you were like us, you sat transfixed during the crucial flyby phase, the climax of a decade long mission. This summer marks the very first opposition of Pluto since New Horizons’ historic flyby of the distant world in July 2015.