You can find pluto

New Horizons will continue on this path, with its communications array aligned to Earth, until at least this time next year. It will take that long to complete the transfer of more than 6 Gigabytes of images and other scientific data collected during the brief encounter with Pluto.

Even at top efficiency, with both of New Horizons’ transmitters sending data, and the spacecraft appearing high in the sky over the array of dishes which make up NASA’s Deep Space Network, the data rate is about half that of the 56 kilobyte modem many of you may remember. Most of the time, communications are at about one quarter of that speed.

Pluto may seem far away but you can still find its location in the sky this week.

While not visible to the naked eye or with anything but the largest of amateur telescopes, you can find Pluto this week with the moon as your guide. Wednesday night, look for the rising, nearly full moon. Hold 3 fingers up with your outstretched hand with the moon on the left. Pluto will be about 5 degrees to the right.

Pluto is, of course, not visible to use because so little light is reflected back from the sun. Astronomers measure that brightness using a logarithmic magnitude scale with lower numbers representing brighter objects. Our sun appears at -27, the next brightest star at -1.5 and those really bright ISS passes are routinely in the -3 to -4 range. Wednesday’s moon will shine brightly at a magnitude of about -12 while Pluto is nearly invisible at a magnitude of +14, or about 25 billion times dimmer. That difference is a big reason why astronomers, professional or amateur, don't do much observing during full moons.