Post-Tropical Storm Little Claudette and Not-so-Little Pluto: July 14, Update A

As expected, Little Claudette didn’t last through the day today. She is now only slightly larger than Pluto (the PLANET) as seen from your home. Winds are currently at 45mph, central pressure is 1004mb, but although she has some circulation she is really part of a front, not a storm. The NHC are done with Claudette, and so am I. The next one is D for Danny-boy, who will be followed by elegant Erika.

But I’m not quite done with this post though! Being a cool and obviously trendy sciency sort of geek, I can’t leave without an honorary mention for New Horizons and Pluto today! Here it is (just in case you somehow missed it), taken with the LORRI and Ralph instruments on the spacecraft …  

(complete with a 'heart'). And here is a really nice video of images taken over the last week that NASA put together…http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

New Horizons took over 9 years to get to Pluto, about 3 billion miles away. It will continue to transmit data back, but is now continuing its journey away from the Solar System, and into the Kuiper Belt (which consists of icy 'objects' - or as Sharon H. says, UBOs - Unidentified Belted Objects - I expect it looks and probably feels a bit like the asteroid belt*) and on to er… new horizons actually! :-)

Eeek... and a real close up of Pluto shows even more details of the surface! 

(from R. Paul Wilson via K. Grazier). ;-)

I think it’s definitely time to raise (another) glass to NASA and the New Horizons team!

Ciao for now,

J.

*Due to a geek-a-luscious conversation with Trent F. I had to modify my initial description of the Kuiper Belt to the slightly more accurate version above. :-) 

Blogs archived at http://jyotikastorms.blogspot.com/
Twitter @JyovianStorm
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DISCLAIMER: These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms - not the opinion of any organization I represent. If you are making an evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the National Hurricane Center's official forecast and the National Weather Service announcements. This is not an official forecast. If I "run away, run away" (Monty Python), I'll let you know.
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