As a child, I loved reading about space and astronomy. I think I pretty much read every book about these topics my local town's library. (It wasn't a large {town, library}) Isaac Asimov's non-fiction books were among my favourites.
I never imagined that now we'd be getting the level of detail seen in these photos of Pluto (level of detail akin to a Moon shot), which until now, only existed in my mind from various artistic impressions. I can only imagine how the folks on the New Horizons team feel after seeing the results of their work after so much time and effort.
Amen. I work at NASA and I'm gobsmacked at the beauty of the New Horizons imagery. I can't wait to see the good stuff.
Isaac Asimov's science essay collections had a profound effect on me. I learned physics years ahead of when I would have in school by reading these essays and learning how to do calculations involving kinetic energy, mass, acceleration, etc. Even more important, those essays helped me learn how to think like a scientist. Asimov's secular humanist world view also influenced my own world view greatly. I met him several times at various SF conventions and I miss him.
Not just essays; he wrote something like a real physics textbook at high-school level, which I learned from as a teenager. (Not in school, of course. IIRC it was more illuminating than my actual high-school physics text.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Physics
I never imagined that now we'd be getting the level of detail seen in these photos of Pluto (level of detail akin to a Moon shot), which until now, only existed in my mind from various artistic impressions. I can only imagine how the folks on the New Horizons team feel after seeing the results of their work after so much time and effort.