All of the new things we’re learning from the New Horizons to Pluto mission are kind of mind-blowing, aren’t they? I mean seriously, who knew the Red Skull had influences in the farthest reaches of our solar system?

Jokes aside, I am loving that Dr. Brian May is a part of all of this. You may be more familiar with Dr. Bri from his iconic hairstyle as well as his rock stardom as the guitarist in Queen:

May was actually working on his PhD in astrophysics (studying reflected light from interplanetary dust and the velocity of dust in the plane of the solar system) in 1974 when Queen’s career started taking off, and like a lot of people, put his studies to the side for his career. In 2006 he went back to school at Imperial College, caught up on the research done on interplanetary dust in the intervening years, submitted a thesis impressively titled, and graduated with his PhD in May 2008, a month shy of his 61st birthday.

All of this is to say that Brian May is not your typical backyard stargazer, let alone your typical rock star. Oh, and he also has been interested in stereophotography since childhood, and has been posting stereophotos on his website for years now so that others can enjoy them. This is going to be important to know in a minute.

May was a collaborator on the New Horizons science team for the Pluto flyby, and spent one hell of a birthday weekend with them, going through images and data as it came in. He blogged about the experience, and shared a stereo image of Pluto that he made himself from images taken during the flyby “the first REAL high quality stereo image of Pluto in history,” as he said. Here he is in a YouTube video to talk a little more about the stereoscopic image he created:

Brian May has been a hero of mine since kindergarten (when I got in trouble with the nuns for coming to school singing “Another One Bites The Dust”), so it’s awesome to see him involved and geeking out over something he’s so passionate about. Hopefully there are many more stereo images of Pluto to come, along with a lot more data about our distant neighbor. Cheers, Dr. Bri, and happy belated birthday.