Robin Lewis-Light
“So, this is our final night together,” Jennifer said, and we looked up at the moon shining down and the stars peeking from around it. Night-time had seemed to come early.
“It’s a nice night,” I said. She nodded.
“It’s never going to be the same now, is it?” she said. I shrugged.
“It’s a big change, but – it’s what we wanted to happen,” I said. “Yes, it’ll be different, but it’s going to be amazing.”
Jennifer looked at me.
“It’ll be different, that is for sure,” she said. “The view might be just as nice, though.” We looked up at the moon and her friends.
“Are you ready?” I said. Jennifer nodded.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said. I gave the moon and the stars a little wave, and then we headed away together…
—
We could still see the stars, but neither of us thought the view was as nice as the one we had seen when we had looked up at the moon, those few days ago.
The moon was still there. We had identified the moon. It was big tonight – no, it was enormous! Then we had identified the other moon, and then the other, and we were fairly sure that we had identified them all, more for fun than science.
“The sunset is different, that is true,” Jennifer said.
“Mm,” I said. “It’s the middle of the day, of course.” Then I looked down at my watch. “I mean, maybe. Depends how you calculate it.”
Jennifer laughed.
“Of course. And the seasons have been… amazing.”
I laughed.
“That’s an interesting word for it,” I said. “The days have got longer, but if we head away to the main site, we can have all day, every day.”
“Was it right to come here?” said Jennifer, looking sadly at the sun for a moment. I looked at her and took her hand. “Was it right to take that trip?”
“If we had not, we would never have had this view, and lived this life,” I said. “Would you have wanted that?”
Jennifer laughed.
“No, I would have regretted it forever.”
We looked up at the moons orbiting, and the stars that were a little less spectacular now, but we knew that coming to Pluto was the best decision we had ever made.
Pluto has five moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx. There is a day-night cycle, but it is about 6.4 days. Because the planet is on a ‘tilt’, it experiences extreme seasonal variations, with some parts of the planet in continuous darkness and some in continuous daylight. It would be a tremendous place to visit, though!
Robin Lewis-Light lives in York, but is planning his next holiday with care, and looking into the price of space shuttles…
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