Bonus Poem: The Object of Our Wonder

The last image returned to Earth before the flyby.
It was taken on 7/13/15, from a distance of 476,000 miles.

The Object of Our Wonder

New Horizons has done its job!
Through expertise, and pulls and lobs
Of planets on its 9-year way,
To Pluto it has reached today!
It blows my mind at light's fast speed
The signal, from so far out, needs
Four hours and a half to go
From there to here, to say hello!
Like some E.T., it's just phoned home,
To touch us, as our planet roams,
Like Pluto, in its silent course,
Around the sun, our common source.

Earth's orbit, one full year equates,
While Pluto's takes two-forty-eight;
We have, on earth, one clair de lune,
While Pluto has at least five moons!
And while, out there, the sun so small,
Each moon, no doubt, a quite dark ball,
I am amazed there's light enough
That we can see such Pluto stuff
That meets the eye! It's so much more
Than anyone has seen before!
We're like Clyde Tombaugh who first saw
The ninth one out, no doubt, in awe.

Of course, it's no more number nine
As "planet" now is redefined;
In eighty-five years, much has changed,
Since Tombaugh found the dwarf so strange.
But now, how cool his ashes fly
By his discov'ry in the sky,
Which young Venetia Burney showed
Her grandpa "Pluto" apropos;
That Englishman then called a friend,
Who called another, to the end
That what's named for the world down under
Is now the object of our wonder.

Scott L. Barton

See the story where NASA interviewed Venetia Burney in 2006, just before the launch of New Horizons. Burney was eleven years old when she suggested Pluto's name. She died in 2009 at the age of 90.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/transcript_pluto_naming_podcast.html