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The University of Arizona Space Science Series
Pluto and Charon Ice Worlds on the Ragged Edge of the Solar System
Book by Stern, Alan, Mitton, Jacqueline
Hardcover
First published December 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 20, 2022
I like to alternate between fiction and non-fiction, and since I had already read a short Richard Bachman horror fiction novel for the first half of October, this book seemed like a good choice to maintain the spookiness factor (you know, Pluto being the god of the underworld and all in ancient Roman mythology) for the second half.
I ordered this book from Amazon the same day as the New Horizons Pluto flyby on July 14, 2015 (when I also ordered a "Bring Back Pluto!" t-shirt). I was so excited and amazed at that achievement, and in absolute awe at the pictures the probe sent back.
Nine years previous in 2006 I recall being in a computer databases class at the University of Central Florida and anxiously watching launch updates on my laptop, with the launch looking like it was going to happen only a couple of minutes before class let out. The professor had not yet collected the previous class meeting's paperwork assignment at ten minutes till conclusion, so I brazenly got up and walked up to the front of the class while he was still lecturing to turn it in on the desk. He looked a little confused and hurt by my actions, and it certainly didn't help when the rest of the class immediately got up to do the same. I don't remember if I told him "Sorry, but we have a launch to Pluto happening in less than two minutes!" but I really hope I did, or that I apologized to him later. I rushed out to stand in the road by the Engineering 2 Building with a sizable crowd of students to watch the Atlas V takeoff from 40ish miles away, and takeoff she did!
Both of those moments stand out in my brain as two of my favorite memories. So I was incredibly excited when I found out Dr. Alan Stern, the Chief Principal Scientist of the New Horizons mission (and the main author of this book) was coming to the Kennedy Space Center in the summer of 2019 to talk about the mission. I had worked the overnight shift and had to wait around few hours until his lecture started, but I sat in the front row (wearing my "Bring Back Pluto!" t-shirt) and this book in hand, which he autographed afterwards (and included the message "Always keep exploring!").
The book itself is great, and details the history of Pluto's discovery and the scientific community's attempts to better understand it despite the major challenges with something being wayyyyyy out there. There's some technical engineering and scientific jargon here and there, which I love, but there is nothing too difficult to understand and is accessible to everyone.
I love it that when this book was published in 2005 that it still often referred to Pluto as a planet, WHICH OF COURSE IT SHOULD STILL BE. There are some early images from the Hubble Space Telescope provided that give a glimmer of what Pluto looks like and it's funny knowing now that it was looking squarely at a giant heart (or Pluto the dog if you prefer). The story weaves itself to where NASA made several attempts to determine what it would take to study Pluto, decided to cancel everything due to high costs and high-risk and effectively zero-ed out the budget, only for the scientific community, the public, and politicians to all fight together to overturn that decision to make sure one happened. The book concludes with a chapter detailing how New Horizons was eventually selected by NASA to conduct the mission and was in the process of being built at the time of publication. I got warm fuzzies knowing everything that it would go on to discover!
I look forward to eventually reading Dr. Stern's book that details the mission's findings in "Chasing New Horizons". He did say that "Pluto and Charon" will get an updated 3rd edition, but I bet that'll be after the New Horizons mission fully concludes (its mission was extended earlier this year to keep conducting solar system observations).
Oh, and I got a cool picture with the man where we both hold up only nine fingers!
PLUTO IS A PLANET.
I ordered this book from Amazon the same day as the New Horizons Pluto flyby on July 14, 2015 (when I also ordered a "Bring Back Pluto!" t-shirt). I was so excited and amazed at that achievement, and in absolute awe at the pictures the probe sent back.
Nine years previous in 2006 I recall being in a computer databases class at the University of Central Florida and anxiously watching launch updates on my laptop, with the launch looking like it was going to happen only a couple of minutes before class let out. The professor had not yet collected the previous class meeting's paperwork assignment at ten minutes till conclusion, so I brazenly got up and walked up to the front of the class while he was still lecturing to turn it in on the desk. He looked a little confused and hurt by my actions, and it certainly didn't help when the rest of the class immediately got up to do the same. I don't remember if I told him "Sorry, but we have a launch to Pluto happening in less than two minutes!" but I really hope I did, or that I apologized to him later. I rushed out to stand in the road by the Engineering 2 Building with a sizable crowd of students to watch the Atlas V takeoff from 40ish miles away, and takeoff she did!
Both of those moments stand out in my brain as two of my favorite memories. So I was incredibly excited when I found out Dr. Alan Stern, the Chief Principal Scientist of the New Horizons mission (and the main author of this book) was coming to the Kennedy Space Center in the summer of 2019 to talk about the mission. I had worked the overnight shift and had to wait around few hours until his lecture started, but I sat in the front row (wearing my "Bring Back Pluto!" t-shirt) and this book in hand, which he autographed afterwards (and included the message "Always keep exploring!").
The book itself is great, and details the history of Pluto's discovery and the scientific community's attempts to better understand it despite the major challenges with something being wayyyyyy out there. There's some technical engineering and scientific jargon here and there, which I love, but there is nothing too difficult to understand and is accessible to everyone.
I love it that when this book was published in 2005 that it still often referred to Pluto as a planet, WHICH OF COURSE IT SHOULD STILL BE. There are some early images from the Hubble Space Telescope provided that give a glimmer of what Pluto looks like and it's funny knowing now that it was looking squarely at a giant heart (or Pluto the dog if you prefer). The story weaves itself to where NASA made several attempts to determine what it would take to study Pluto, decided to cancel everything due to high costs and high-risk and effectively zero-ed out the budget, only for the scientific community, the public, and politicians to all fight together to overturn that decision to make sure one happened. The book concludes with a chapter detailing how New Horizons was eventually selected by NASA to conduct the mission and was in the process of being built at the time of publication. I got warm fuzzies knowing everything that it would go on to discover!
I look forward to eventually reading Dr. Stern's book that details the mission's findings in "Chasing New Horizons". He did say that "Pluto and Charon" will get an updated 3rd edition, but I bet that'll be after the New Horizons mission fully concludes (its mission was extended earlier this year to keep conducting solar system observations).
Oh, and I got a cool picture with the man where we both hold up only nine fingers!
PLUTO IS A PLANET.
June 25, 2015
Egads! The New Horizons mission (on its way to Pluto right now! and led by principal investigator Alan Stern co-author of this book) is cool, space exploration is cool, science is cool — this book though...Whew, it's pretty tedious and the writing style, aimed at making this more accessible, employs some annoying metaphors and turns of phrase.
This is all the science that they don't show in movies: The long slog of discovery before getting to the end result. Seems like writing a novel, in process a lot of desk work, before the exciting (hopefully) end result. Do you really want to peer behind the curtain?
If you do and you want to know about Pluto and Charon, in all the nitty-gritty detail, this is the book.
Do strongly prefer Mike Brown's "How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming" for an entertaining book on planetary discovery or you might choose to watch NASA's nerdy but informative New Horizons documentary, "The Year of Pluto - New Horizons Documentary Brings Humanity Closer to the Edge of the Solar System" to glean some of this information in a more digestible format.
As cool as it would have been, I am glad I didn't buy the $60 hardback copy at the awesome Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. in Seattle and instead got this in paperback.
This is all the science that they don't show in movies: The long slog of discovery before getting to the end result. Seems like writing a novel, in process a lot of desk work, before the exciting (hopefully) end result. Do you really want to peer behind the curtain?
If you do and you want to know about Pluto and Charon, in all the nitty-gritty detail, this is the book.
Do strongly prefer Mike Brown's "How I Killed Pluto and Why it Had it Coming" for an entertaining book on planetary discovery or you might choose to watch NASA's nerdy but informative New Horizons documentary, "The Year of Pluto - New Horizons Documentary Brings Humanity Closer to the Edge of the Solar System" to glean some of this information in a more digestible format.
As cool as it would have been, I am glad I didn't buy the $60 hardback copy at the awesome Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. in Seattle and instead got this in paperback.
September 29, 2021
Since this book was published in 1998, it doesn't cover recent discoveries or events, like the New Horizons mission. But it still gives a fascinating history of Pluto research up to the late 1990s.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews