The Planet with a Heart

The Planet with a Heart.

I am not wise or learned, of things about the sky.

They say you’re not a planet, and I can’t imagine why.

The fact that you’re a perfect sphere, is plain for all to see.

Three billion miles away from here, through a camera called LORRI.

The fact you orbit ‘round the sun, was never in dispute.

But you fail to clear yourself a path, and so the ill repute.

Because you’re nice to neighbors and share your space with friends.

The experts say you’re just a dwarf, and then debating ends.

Not the god of the underworld, but the loving pup instead.

The joy of children everywhere, who have Walt Disney read.

Forty-seven point seven-eight times the speed of sound.

Yet it’s been almost a decade since the rocket left the ground.

We only get a moment’s glance, as New Horizons speeds on by.

But for twenty, thirty years from now, we’ll still be looking at the sky.

You share your space with Charon, more a sister than a moon.

With Stix and Nix and Hydra, and Kerberos we’ll see soon.

Pluto has an atmosphere, a thousand miles high.

The tiny pull of gravity, cannot keep the gasses nigh.

Nitrogen and Methane, fill the summer sky.

For a hundred years of summer, as the sun is passing by.

Then a hundred years of winter, make snow that hits the light.

The reddish snow is “Tholins”. Carbon Monoxide is white.

As we gaze upon your beauty, we have known right from the start,

In times gone by and times to come, you’re the planet with a heart.

This poem was written in commemoration of the New Horizons flyby of Pluto July 14, 2015.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/overview/index.html

Disciples Discussion Den