Interstellar Voyagers

Do you know what Pluto looks like? Probably not. No one does! Because Pluto is incredibly far away (~4.5 billion miles at its farthest point, ~2.7 billion miles at its closest point), it is impossible to get a good picture of it from Earth. Below is the best picture we have of Pluto. 

These are the best pictures we have of Pluto, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and enhanced by computers. Image Credit: NASA

However, just next year we will finally have good pictures of Pluto. The New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006, will fly by Pluto in July of 2015. New Horizons is the fastest space probe ever launched, and it still will have taken it 9.5 years to get to Pluto! It will fly by Pluto, imaging the dwarf planet and using its other scientific instruments to learn about Pluto's atmosphere, terrain, and chemical composition. New Horizons is getting pretty close to the dwarf planet, and took these images (put together in a little movie) of Pluto and its moon Charon in July of 2014. 

This movie is made of 12 images taken over 6 days. See Charon make almost one complete revolution around Pluto. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

After New Horizons flies by Pluto, it will study another object in the Kuiper Belt, the belt of icy asteroids that Pluto is a part of. The primary mission will end in 2026, but New Horizons will still be moving through space, and will hopefully be able to send data back to Earth. If it is still functioning in 2038 it will be 100 AU (Earth-Sun distances) from the Sun, or about 93 billion miles away. After it leaves our solar system, it will become one of only a few interstellar spacecraft ever launched from Earth. 

Pioneer 10, launched in 1972, and Pioneer 11, launched in 1973, were the first missions with the velocities to leave our solar system. They explored Jupiter and Saturn for the first time, and although they no longer communicate with Earth, they are silently speeding away from the Sun. Their distances have been overtaken by Voyager 1 and 2, launched in 1977. These amazing spacecrafts explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and are still able to communicate with Earth. Voyager 1 is the most distant man-made object from the Sun. As of September 2014, it was 129.18 AU from the Sun, or about 12 billion miles, and according to NASA, officially out of the heliosphere and exploring interstellar space. 

Speaking of interstellar space, the Peoria Riverfront Museum's Giant Screen Theater will be showing the Christopher Nolan film, Interstellar, beginning November 6. We are pretty excited about this in the planetarium, because the film is based on work by Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist. The film should be beautiful, fun, and as scientifically accurate as possible! If you are interested, you can get tickets here. Before the film premiere, we will have an astronomy question and answer session starting at 7:30 PM. 

AND it gets even better. We have a brand new live show in the Dome to compliment the film, Interstellar Voyagers. In this show we will follow the paths of Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and New Horizons, exploring the reality of interstellar space travel using our stunning Uniview software. Planetarium shows are always included with general admission, but you can see Interstellar Voyagers for free if you keep your ticket stub from the movie and present it to our Planetarium Operator! See full schedule and show descriptions here. We hope to see you at the Dome for the show!