In 1846, Neptune was discovered, but it's orbit defied predictions and speculation occurred that Neptune was being perturbed by another planet. For decades, searches were made for what lie beyond Neptune. It was Percival Lowell's life goal to find Planet X but he died before finding anything. In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh was looking over several nights at the stars in the constellation Gemini from Arizona when he noticed one of the lights had moved. The light later named Pluto, was classified as a planet. Pluto was later joined by the discovery of its moon Charon in 1978 by James Christy. In 1992, another object was found beyond Neptune, 15760 Albion. Albion was the beginning of the discovery of the Kuiper Belt. The discovery of 136199 Eris, similar in size to Pluto, was the last nail in the coffin for Pluto's designation as a planet. In 2006, Pluto and Ceres were redefined as dwarf planets as they orbited the sun, were round, but had many objects of similar size sharing their orbit.
- Pluto sports the biggest heart of any planet!!!
Despite its reclassification, many still treat it as a planet. In January 2006, the New Horizons mission was launched towards what was for a few more months, considered the last remaining planet in the Solar system to be explored. 9 and a half long years later around Independence day, New Horizons started to resolve Pluto, Charon and its 4 since discovered moons, Hydra, Nix, Kerberos, and Styx. It was just a week before the big day when suddenly... PANIC!!! New Horizons entered safe mode with just 9 days remaining. With 8 hours to transmit to and 8 hours from Earth, time was running out in a fast but sluggish manner to run a fix on the space probe to exit it out of safe mode! It was determined a command overload caused the safe mode and a fix was implemented on July 7.
- Charon the redhead binary moon.
On July 15, New Horizons flew by Pluto and Charon, giving us a look at worlds covered in not just craters, but also chasms, faultlines, valleys, mountains, cryovolcanoes, and even a giant ice cap so young only surfaces on Earth and Io have been found to have younger surfaces as Sputnik Planitia even at the highest resolution was found to not have a single crater. Most of all, Pluto seemed happy to see us as it's bright areas were displayed in an area the shape of a heart.
- Nix and Hydra with new models.
For the next 2 years, New Horizons would send back data from the encounter before continuing on. What once was a snub by Voyager 1 to Titan and leading up to the Cassini/Huygens mission also lead to the New Horizons mission and eventually a flyby of another object, Arrokoth. As New Horizons sailed further on, it looked back at Pluto and took images of a most fitting farewell sight... the disk of Pluto surrounded by its thin atmospheric haze backlit by the Sun. Here, we witnessed the farthest edge of the Solar System as it was known by 1991. For 60 years, Pluto was known as a sentinel overlooking the edge of known territory in the Solar System. Today it is known as the largest solid object directly orbiting the Sun beyond Mars. Together with Charon, they perform a dance around a barycenter as they orbit around the sun, sometimes coming close to Neptune's orbit when Neptune is elsewhere... Awaiting mankind to return in the 22nd century.
- Pluto's atmosphere casts a glow around it.
This addon contains
32K surface texture of Pluto including Hubble and Charonshine data
32K normalmap of Pluto including limb height data
32K topographic map of Pluto
16K texture of Charon including Lowell and Plutoshine data
16K normalmap of Charon including limb height data
16K topographic map of charon
Geologic and composition maps of both
New models of Nix and Hydra
NOTE: If you downloaded my previous Nix/Hydra model uploads or Grand Tour Dwarf Planets, delete the Pluto system stuff in those and download this!!!
DOWNLOAD EVERYONE'S FAVORITE BINARY PLANET HERE!!!
