Journal: News & Comment

Seeing Pluto

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Speaking of dark skies, I have seen Pluto once when I was about 12. It was a stargazing trip to Manning Park, a few hours east of Vancouver, with my dad and two of my second cousins, one of whom, Roman, was also an amateur astronomer, and the other, Dennis, roughly my age, tagging along like me.

The night was very, very dark, and the cold was bitter. Dennis and I shivered in the van trying to sleep. But at one point my dad called me out and I looked into the eyepiece of his Celestron telescope. "See that star?" he asked. "Look to the left of it, where you see the fainter star. Then look slightly away, and in your peripheral vision you should catch a very faint dot. That's Pluto."

And I did see it, light from the sun that had traveled out to Pluto, then back to my dad's telescope and into my eye. I was freezing cold, but I don't regret going.

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