An Artist's Impression of Eris and Her Moon, Dysnomia

Gee, looks sort of like the Moon up close and the Moon far away, doesn't it?  I like the way human artists always show a Moon -- any Moon, like this one, Dysnomia, the companion to our best-beloved new dwarf planet, Eris -- as looking a lot like Luna, the Moon that tags along with the Earth.  And Eris herself in this photo looks a lot like Luna -- if she had been used as a soccer ball by some really mean kids on a muddy day. 

 

(It helps to show just how little imagination the shaved monkeys really have.  Our limitations are something we should always keep in mind.)

 

(Just an aside. When I was looking for these images I stumbled across a startling statement about Pluto:  we cannot know the size of Pluto, it said, until the latest unmanned probe arrives there, "because its atmosphere blurs the images."  Wait, Pluto has an atmosphere?  That's where my own imagination fails, because I have always seen Pluto depicted as a bare hunk of rock like the two illustrated above.  Of course, I saw this statement on Wikipedia, so you know, caveat lector and all that.)

 

While I'm at it, here is a non-artist's impression of Eris and Dysnomia: 

 

 

 

Such lively colors!  Such a blazing halo of light! I can almost see the rays reaching for the surface of the Earth where the radiation gets everyone arguing about gun control and whether God is dead!  Coolness!