Discovering Pluto
Subtitle: exploration at the edge of the solar system
By: Dale P. Cruikshank and William Sheehan
Contributors: Sheehan, William, 1954- author
Publisher: The University of Arizona Press
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 475
ISBN-13: 9780816534319
Description: "Discovering Pluto is an authoritative account of the exploration of Pluto and its moons from the first inklings of tentative knowledge through the exciting discoveries made during the flyby of the NASA New Horizons research spacecraft in July 2015. Co-author Dale P. Cruikshank was a co-investigator on the New Horizons mission, while co-author William Sheehan is a noted historian of the Solar System. Telling the tale of Pluto's discovery, the authors recount the grand story of our unfolding knowledge of the outer Solar System, from William Herschel's serendipitous discover of Uranus in 1781, to the 1846 mathematical prediction of Neptune's existence, to Percival Lowell's studies of the wayward motions of those giant planets leading to his prediction of another world farther out."--Dust jacket flap.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 421-463) and index.
Table of contents: title: Twenty-Seven Years and Three Billion Miles; title: A New Planet; title: Gaps; title: "With the Tip of a Pen"; title: Post-Discovery Controversies; title: The Search for Planet X; title: Clyde's Planet; title: Planetary Astronomy; title: Planetary Science, New Technology, and the Discovery of Ice; title: Whence the Ices? Chemistry in the Solar System; title: Icy Earth and Beyond; title: Why Ice on Pluto Matters; title: New Discoveries and a New Paradigm; title: Ices Predict an Atmosphere; title: Surprise! A Moon Is Found; title: More Than Ice : Some Extraordinary Chemistry; title: Genesis of a Flight to Pluto; title: The Flight of New Horizons; title: Pluto and Charon : Marvelous Worlds; title: On to the Kuiper Belt; title: Appendix 1. The New Horizons Science Team; title: Appendix 2. The New Horizons Spacecraft.