The Best Images Of Pluto And Arrokoth We Have Ever Seen

Astronomer Edward Barnard was training the Yerkes Observatory’s Bruce photographic telescope on a portion of the sky constellation Taurus.

He wasn’t looking for planets, but that night in November 1909, he took a wide field exposure for one hour and 19 minutes, surveying a region around Halley’s comet.
Then he stored the plate and recorded the data in his logbook.

What happened though is that, nearly 100 years later, astronomers at Yerkes looked again at Barnard’s photographic plate from November 11, 1909, and another taken on August 21 of that year and found what they believe are the earliest known pictures of Pluto, exposed 21 years before the planet was even discovered.

Astronomers used a tool, called MegaStar sky atlas software, that gives a precise position for Pluto at any date past or future, based on current orbital data.

By overlaying the simulated MegaStar position on the 1909 photos, they found tiny dots—nearly at the limit of what can be distinguished from the photographic grain of the old plates—at the same position.
The other images show various views of Pluto as seen by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope beginning in the 1990s and NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.

Do not forget to share your opinion with us to provide you with the best posts !