Greetings fellow astrophiles,

With the New Horizons flyby of Pluto occurring on July 14th, two articles on the syracuse.com website have helped bring the news to a Central New York focus.

The first – “Pluto flyby: New Horizons probe sends stunning photos as it nears a close encounter” – was posted very early this morning and is from Michigan meteorologist Mark Torregrossa.

The second (posted just in time for morning coffee) – “Pluto mission: NASA spacecraft New Horizons will have close encounter this week” – is from significantly closer to home by Glenn Coin (who also helped to keep much of CNY in the loop with his articles about potential aurora activity a few weeks past. The CNYO website had 1,453 hits that day because of it!).

While Torregrossa’s article sticks close to some specifics about the surface features on Pluto now coming into increasingly finer detail, Glenn’s is full of some very handy comparisons to put the whole flyby into a bit more perspective as we sit and wait for better images (such as “The spacecraft will be as close to Pluto as New York is to South Africa.“ and “It’s only 1,500 miles in diameter — the distance from New York City to Dallas — but it has five moons.” – And some handy further reading links are included as well).

Kudos to Glenn, Mark, and syracuse.com for providing some local color to the *other* great NASA (dwarf) planet mission happening this year. CNYO already has a few lectures scheduled in the Fall where both the New Horizons/Pluto and Dawn @ Ceres missions will be presented. Stay tuned for further announcements!