Tuesday, July 14, 2015

The First Images of Pluto Arrive

The first images of Pluto won't really arrive until tomorrow morning.


These images are from this evening's walk on the Coastal Trail.


From today's New York Times, I loved this!

... Because Pluto is the Roman god of the underworld, the scientists drew on underworld entities from myths and literature in beginning to assign informal names to the regions.

A large splotch that resembles a whale was named Cthulu, a deity from a H. P. Lovecraft story. Other splotch names included Meng-Po, the goddess of forgetfulness in Chinese mythology; Balrog, a creature in J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” books; and Vucub Came and Hun Came, death gods of Mayan mythology.