The DC Women's Hiking Group will start up for a new year of hiking.
We hike every Tuesday and Thursday during the school year.
We will meet on Tuesday, Sept. 8th and start in Redding at Topstone Park.

From Rt. 7 turn onto Topstone Rd.
Follow over the RR tracks.
Shortly after it becomes a dirt road turn right into parking area.

Meet at 8:30am.

As school starts up, it's time to get hiking again.
The DC Women's Hiking Group will start up for the season on Thurs., Aug. 29th.
We will hike at Seth Low Pierrepont State Park in Ridgefield.
The park is located on Barlow Mt. Rd. across from Scotland and Barlow Mt. Elementary Schools.
Meet in the parking area at 8:30am.

Pluto - Downgraded and Downsized!

It was 5 years ago that the International Astronomical Union downgraded Pluto to a newly created category of dwarf plant. This new category helped explain the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune that make up the Kuiper Belt. Pluto dilemma was created by the discovery in 2005 of a second major Kuiper object, Eris. Eris was rightly named for the goddess of discord and strife. She is credited with stirring up enough jealously and envy to cause the Trojan War and now centuries’ later discord among astronomers. When discovered by American Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Pluto was thought to be larger than Mercury and possibly bigger than the Earth. Since then it has been downsized to about 1,455 miles across which is less than the width of the USA. It’s extremely elliptical orbit is not on the same plane as the eight official planets and at times makes it overlap Neptune orbit. During this time it is closer to the sun than the gas giant. It takes 248 Earth years to complete one circuit around the sun at an average distance of 3.65 billion miles. This distance makes Pluto one of the coldest places in the solar system with surface temperatures hovering around -375ºF. It has 4 known moons, Charon, Nix, Hydra and a newly discovered tiny one presently called P4. Charon is about half the size of Pluto which leads some astronomers to regard Pluto and Charon as a double dwarf planet or binary system. Even though it is smaller than Earth’s moon, Pluto has managed to hold onto a thin atmosphere composed mainly of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide that extends about 1,860 miles into space and changes color. Just recently it discovered by NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft that Charon also has an atmosphere. New Horizon should reach Pluto in July 2015 giving us a new outlook on the tiny worlds at the edge of our solar system. Info credit to Space.com