KELSEYVILLE >> Lake County’s Window to the Universe presents “Pluto and the New Horizons Probe” on Saturday at the Taylor Observatory. The speaker is Ed Giannelli, observatory docent.
After its demise as a full-fledged planet in 2006, Pluto is back in the news as high-resolution photos of the solar system traveler stream back from the New Horizons space probe. NASA launched New Horizons in 2006, the year Pluto received its stunning and still-debated demotion, with the mission to study Pluto close up, with special emphasis on its five moons. One of these moons, Charon, discovered in 1978, is more than half the size of Pluto itself. The New Horizons probe represents a stunning accomplishment for NASA’s engineers and scientists, adding to the already exciting success of the Mars Curiosity rover. The rendezvous with Pluto takes place on July 14.
Giannelli has special qualifications to discuss Pluto, having met Pluto’s discoverer, astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh. Pluto was named by an 11-year-old girl from England, Venetia Burney. During Giannelli’s talk, attendees will hear the story behind the name and how the letters “Pl” in Pluto had special significance for making the name an acceptable choice to astronomers in the early 1930s. Eleven years later, chemist Glenn T. Seaborg of Berkeley even named a chemical element after the new planet, the now infamous Plutonium, as he had done previously for planets Neptune and Uranus.
The Saturday event will feature two shows in the Norton Planetarium. At 7:15 p.m., “Firefall” describes the history of impacts of Near-Earth Objects including the huge Arizona meteor crater, and the February 2013 battleship-sized meteor impact in the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, which caused major damage and injury to its resident.
The second planetarium show at 9 p.m. will be a detailed description of the May night sky by solar system expert Eduardo Alatorre. His talk will prepare visitors for viewings through the observatory’s telescopes. Jupiter will present a stunning view high in sky, and visitors will likely catch the first springtime glimpse of Saturn low in the southeastern sky, along with the star cluster known as the M4 near the yellow star Antares in the constellation Scorpio.
Admission to the talk, planetarium show and night sky viewing through the Taylor’s telescopes costs $5 for adults, $3 for children 12 and younger. The observatory is located at is 5725 Oak Hills Lane in Kelseyville. For further information visit www.taylorobservatory.org or call 262-4121 or 415 209-3084.
