Kuiper Belt Ferryman
Janet Kuypers
7/18/19 (for New Horizons space probe
photographing Pluto and Charon 7/13/15)
It’s a love-struck Universe we live in.
We searched out to what we thought
was the very edge of our Solar System,
and what we found was the interlocking
love affair between Pluto and Charon.
I know, I know, Pluto was demoted
from planetary status August twenty-
four oh four, it’s a dwarf planet now,
a member of the infamous Kuiper Belt...
but on my birthday
twenty-eight years earlier
an astronomer discovered
a ‘bulge’ in images
of the planet Pluto,
and they discovered Pluto
was in a very close dance
with a partner they named Charon,
discovered on plates taken
five years before I was even born.
Astronomers wanted to name
their new-found moon something
more catchy than their usual
lengthy string of digits,
so the astronomer slash
discoverer suggested Charon,
only because it sounded like
a nickname for the discoverer’s wife.
But when Pluto in mythology
is defined as the Roman God
for death, Hades, the astronomers
laughed at the coincidence
that Charon is a Greek mythological
figure for the ferryman of the dead —
so wow, how closely does Pluto
now intermingle with Charon,
especially when Charon
is just so large
when compared to Pluto
that they actually share
a center of gravity
not in Pluto,
but between them.
You see, I told you there’s something
about this dance these two
remain locked in together...
and we love-struck astronomers
can agree that when two objects
find each other on the edge
of our Solar System
where it’s oh so cold,
they’ve got to stay together,
to cause some fireworks
of their own
right at the edge
of the Kuiper belt —
just to heat things up.
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