Tag: small

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In the distant perpetual twilight of the deep-freeze of our Solar System, a multitude of sparkling icy objects–both large and small–circle our Sun beyond the orbit of the giant, gaseous, and beautiful blue planet Neptune, which is the outermost of the eight major planets from our Sun. Here, in the mysterious and frigid Kuiper Belt, our Sun appears to be only a particularly large star shining brightly, like a celestial firefly, in the midst of a swarm of smaller stars. On July 14, 2015, after spending ten treacherous years soaring through interplanetary space to reach its primary destination in the Kuiper Belt–the ice-dwarf-planet Pluto and its quintet of little moons–NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft successfully made its historic closest approach to the Pluto system. Images sent back to Earth revealed new and exciting secrets long held by this beloved little world with a big heart. But, New Horizons’…