For the last couple decades, Pluto has been a controversial little rock. It's been considered an outsider since its discovery in 1930: just a little tinier, a little father away, a little different than the others. It was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, vexing astronomists and Pluto-enthusiasts world-wide for years to come.
Also in 2006, the space probe New Horizons was launched and began an epic nine and a half year, three billion mile journey that culminated Tuesday morning, 7:49 am Eastern Standard Earth time, when it flew by the underdog satellite at over 28,000 miles per hour.
Steve Fentress of the Strasenburgh Planetarium thinks any debate surrounding Pluto's former planet-hood will fade once the orb itself comes more clearly into focus.
"I think what's going to happen in the next few weeks as we see what Pluto and its moons really look like is that the arguments which seemed to be the hottest thing a few years ago are going to be blown away by the strangeness of what we're about to see."
PLUTO AT LAST
New Horizons is expected to capture and transmit some of the most detailed images of Pluto humans have ever seen. Fentress says Pluto At Last is their homage to the occasion. The exhibit is an hour long, runs all summer, and will be updated as more photographs and data make their way back to earth.
Fentress says events like these always reignite in people an interest in astronomy, but Pluto's photo shoot is happening at a particularly special time in history.
"I think the difference now is that we're in a networked era where people are getting such good stuff on their phones. Its a continuing story now, which is actually a good thing. It's not all over in one day; the discovery goes on for weeks, months, even years."
The first image of Pluto shared to NASA's Instagram has already been meme-ified. Fentress says the ability to customize pictures is another level of interaction with the event that gets people excited about space exploration.
Pluto at Last also contains artifacts detailing Pluto's discovery. Strasenburgh's exhibit contains one of the first photographs used by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 to identify the celestial being. Tombaugh was 24-years-old then, and he passed away in 1997, but he is not completely gone. Some of Tombaugh's ashes are currently riding along on New Horizons' voyage as it hurtles past the dwarf planet that will forever be associated with his name.
ROCHESTER OPTICS IN SPACE
Also onboard New Horizons are a couple image capturing systems developed in the Rochester region. Optimax is an optics manufacturer based in Ontario, New York. They make optical components for the aerospace and defense industry, including NASA.
Brandon Light has been an engineer with Optimax for 16 years and worked on the New Horizons project since the beginning. Light says he's happy to see the images starting to come in, because some of the technology they developed prior to the probe's launch in 2006 is already obsolete here on Earth today. For context, in 2006, the iPod Nano had a maximum of eight gigabits of memory.* (The iPhone did not yet exist.)
Light says the company was involved in two different imaging systems on the space probe. A low resolution image system capable of seeing far into the distance helps New Horizons stay on course. The high resolution, or hyper spectral imaging system, captures Pluto visually, but it also details its chemical composition.
"We wanted to learn some things about what was going on with Pluto and what it could tell us possibly about the origin of the solar system, origin of the universe, and how it would relate to the formation of our own planet."
Working with equipment intended for space exploration makes every step of the process seem more meaningful, according to Light, and it also makes it more challenging. Imagine driving top speed on the highway. Now imagine you're moving 5,000 times faster than that. Now imagine taking a picture. Light says that is what they were up against.
He says its also a testament to the advancement of image capturing technology, in which Rochester plays a big role.
"There's a rich knowledge and heritage within this town. People within in this building, they've had exposure, they've been brought up, they've got family that have been in the industry for years, and to be able to call on those years of experience it was great to see. To some extent, this was Rochester's contribution."
New Horizons will continue on past Pluto into the rest of the Kuiper belt. It's powered by a nuclear generator that runs, appropriately enough, on plutonium, that is expected to push it on until the 2030s -- a century after Pluto's discovery.
*Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the most advanced iPod in 2006 had four gigabits of memory. Actually, in 2006, there were several versions of the iPod: The first generation Nano was released in September of 2005 and came with one, two, or four gigs. The second generation released in fall of 2006 had two, four, or eight gig options. The fifth generation iPod Classic was available in 2006 with up to 80 gigabits. Serves us right for using Apple products to measure the passage of time.
