The space of night is infinite,
The blackness and emptiness
Crossed only by thin bright fences
Of logic

— Kenneth Rexroth
"Theory of Numbers"

Pluto Charon

Pluto Charon

A composite of 13x13 arcsec wide images taken with the adaptive optics camera NACO on Yepun, one of the Unit Telescopes of ESO's VLT (Paranal). The images were taken in the K-band (2.2 microns) from about three hours to about one hour before the occultation. All images were centered on Pluto and Charon, the double object visible near the center, with a separation of about 0.9 arcsec. Because of the system's motion, the occulted star, at the right of Pluto and Charon, appears as a dotted trail, and so does another star in the lower left corner.