In 1930 American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered a dwarf planet orbiting beyond the planet Neptune. An eleven year old girl, Venetia Burney, suggested the name Pluto. We now know Pluto to be one of the largest and brightest objects in the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is a disk of icy bodies orbiting the Sun beginning beyond the orbit of Neptune. In 1978 American astronomer James Christy discovered that Pluto had a moon half its size and he named it Charon after his wife’s nickname “Char”. To further this romantic theme, the same surfaces of Pluto and Charon always face each other and in 2015, a large heart shaped feature was discovered on Pluto during the flyby of the New Horizons Spacecraft. This piano piece is dedicated to Dr. Alan Stern, the principal investigator of the New Horizons Spacecraft mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. He is a scientific collaborator and close friend of the authors. Dr. Martin Duncan
