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Pluto New Horizons |OT| New images. Pluto/Charon still geologically active

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I think the USSR's Venera 13 lander did a pretty good job of capturing Venus's hellscape, especially considering this was 1982. The lander lasted for more than an hour.
BrVaauJ.jpg

Looks like an ocean of pee.
 

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
How did you guys predict where Pluto would be when you sent @NASANewHorizons to space, since we and pluto are always in motion?

We kept taking pictures of it from the s/c and adjusting the orbit as needed. Kinda neat uh?

When will we receive more detailed imagery? #PlutoFlyby #Pluto @NASANewHorizons

Late tonight it will start coming in. When we are all in bed asleep since in the AM we will be back to look at them

any pictures of the smaller moons available yet?

Yes. we've resolved the big ones, just a couple of pixels. It does show us that they are football shaped.. JimGreen

what can we reasonably learn from our fly-into the Kuiper belt? I would imagine most of the real data would require regolith....?

KBos have only been observed remotely through telescopes as points of light. KBOs are relics from the earliest times of solar system formation, born at the edge of our solar system's planetary disk. We have never been up close to one before Pluto. - Carey

Are we going to land on the Pluto someday ? Have we missed opportunity to do this now ?

Only if we can come up with a compelling scientific reason to do so. JimGreen

What are the chances of New Horizons lasting as long as the Voyagers have?

Its radioactive power supply will last into the 2030s. Then it will be too cold for the s/c to operateJimGreen

Why do you think Charon has more craters than Pluto?

One possibility is that Charon has no atmosphere to freeze out and cover up craters with surface ices. - Carey
 
We as a species need to get our shit together...seriously.

The price tag isn't even half that sad story; I'm scared to know how many people (particularly in, say, Congress) would look at that sentence and think "We could've had 2 more F-35s and instead we got some boring pictures of Pluto?".
 

pulsemyne

Member
One of the current fanciful ideas been banded about is to have floating habitats on venus. Stay up above the clouds and the acid but remain protected by the planets magnetic field. Large scale balloons could be used.
 

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Aww shit, Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter next July. Forgot about that.

Edit- No Earth picture.

Can you take a picture of the Earth from Pluto?

No. For it to take a picture of Earth, it would have to point the cameras back toward the sun. That would be bad.
 

ibyea

Banned
In some ways this is quiet bittersweet. We learned a lot more about Pluto and we know what it looks like from upclose, and there is so much unexpectedly complex features it's awesome. At the same time it's just a single flyby and I wish there was something that could have stayed to keep studying it. Unfortunately Pluto's gravity is so weak and the spacecraft is going so fast that there wouldn't be enough fuel to put it in orbit. It will be a very long time before we see Pluto like this again.
 

Dai101

Banned
Two kilobits per second.

Faster than an australian ISP, YAY!!

Something like this, I would imagine.


Pluto, a new song by Taylor Swift

There is a certain irony that the planet named for War is a peaceful dust ball and the planet named for Love is quite literally hell.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned"

I think the USSR's Venera 13 lander did a pretty good job of capturing Venus's hellscape, especially considering this was 1982. The lander lasted for more than an hour.
BrVaauJ.jpg

That's hardcore. Also reminded me of the hellish landscapes of Doom64
 
In some ways this is quiet bittersweet. We learned a lot more about Pluto and we know what it looks like from upclose, and there is so much unexpectedly complex features it's awesome. At the same time it's just a single flyby and I wish there was something that could have stayed to keep studying it.

It is indeed bittersweet, though there's tons of data and pictures of Pluto and its moons that will be trickling back from NH over the next year. And if NH gets additional funding, we still have a Kuiper Belt Object to look forward to, which we really know nothing about.
 

jmdajr

Member
In some ways this is quiet bittersweet. We learned a lot more about Pluto and we know what it looks like from upclose, and there is so much unexpectedly complex features it's awesome. At the same time it's just a single flyby and I wish there was something that could have stayed to keep studying it. Unfortunately Pluto's gravity is so weak and the spacecraft is going so fast that there wouldn't be enough fuel to put it in orbit. It will be a very long time before we see Pluto like this again.

Maybe we will see more cool things later out there.
 

Ding II

Member
From what I've read here, NASA had to continuously adjust the path of the probe to get it where it is. Why though? Don't we know the orbit and the speed of the orbit of Pluto? Why couldn't it's location have been calculated out at launch? What variable(s) were unknown for such a calculation?
I think it's just that we're hitting our technology's limits of precision. For instance, we know the mass, velocity, and location of (for instance) Jupiter down to a bunch of decimal places, but that doesn't mean we know exactly how hard Jupiter will be pulling on a particular spacecraft, on a date many years in the future. There is always some small uncertainty. Similarly, we can tell the spacecraft to fire its thrusters for "exactly" 24.32 seconds, but we'll undoubtedly miss that mark by some number of microseconds in one direction or the other.

Those sorts of tiny, initially unmeasurable, errors will build up over the years. So every year or so, we'll measure that error to the best of our ability, and instruct the spacecraft to make a tiny correction. The correction will not be perfect either. After another year or so, we'll do it again. Gradually, we get closer and closer to the "perfect" course. I believe the NASA dude said that New Horizons got to Pluto 70 seconds earlier than what they targeted. Good enough.
 

ibyea

Banned
It is indeed bittersweet, though there's tons of data and pictures of Pluto and its moons that will be trickling back from NH over the next year. And if NH gets additional funding, we still have a Kuiper Belt Object to look forward to, which we really know nothing about.

Oh yeah I am really looking forward to the observations of other Kuiper Belt Objects. That is one of the pluses to not just sticking to Pluto.
 

Prez

Member
Aww shit, Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter next July. Forgot about that.

Edit- No Earth picture.

Can you take a picture of the Earth from Pluto?

No. For it to take a picture of Earth, it would have to point the cameras back toward the sun. That would be bad.

How come Voyager 1 could take a picture of Earth but New Horizons can't?

I'm pretty sure it's a false colour image from a probe using radio waves to penetrate the atmosphere of the planet.

edit: Yup it's from the Magellan probe.

Now I really want a high-res version of this picture to print a poster:

Magellan_-_end_of_mission_poster_-_mgnlogo2.gif
 

pulsemyne

Member
How come Voyager 1 could take a picture of Earth but New Horizons can't?



Now I really want a high-res version of this picture to print a poster:

Magellan_-_end_of_mission_poster_-_mgnlogo2.gif

Voyagers camera was moveable. Also if new horizons was turned to face earth then the sun would burn out the imager.
 

Prez

Member
I really wish we'd get a ton of lander programs to Venus, Europa and Titan. The Soviet Venera program was awesome, I'd love a repeat of that with current technology so we could get a lot more photos from the surface.

Venus intrigues me a lot because it once might have been like Earth and it could very well be what Earth will become in millions of years.

Voyagers camera was moveable. Also if new horizons was turned to face earth then the sun would burn out the imager.

I thought New Horizons has to turn around every time to transmit to Earth?
 

HTupolev

Member
How come Voyager 1 could take a picture of Earth but New Horizons can't?
Voyager 1 wasn't positioned to take scientifically useful pictures of anything anymore, and they were about to permanently shut the cameras down regardless to reduce the electronic load.

New Horizons needs to be kept in good shape for another KBO flyby.
 
so far away?? isn't the sun relatively small from the Kuiper Belt?

It is, but it's still too bright for the NH's sensitive cameras.

Other probes took pictures of Earth with the big planets (like Saturn) eclipsing Sun. But right now Earth would appear to close to our star not to be lost in the Sun's corona.
 

Jedi2016

Member
I thought New Horizons has to turn around every time to transmit to Earth?
It does, but the radio dish is mounted perpendicular to the cameras. So when it's transmitting to us, the cameras are pointing off into the ether. I'm sure they've passed over the sun before, though, and it's taking some shots looking back at Pluto and the moons after the flyby, so it'll be pointed in the general direction of the sun. I don't think the sensors are so sensitive that they'd fry instantly, especially at that range.. the sun's not exactly all that bright out there.
 

sono

Gold Member
Aww shit, Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter next July. Forgot about that.

Thanks for reminding me - I just fired up the Nasa Eyes app and selected the Juno Mission and used the fast forward feature to get this shot..

junojhs4o.png
 

Ding II

Member
New Horizon's camera(s) is facing back towards the sun as we speak. It's kinda hard to take pictures of the dark side of Pluto, and its backlit atmosphere, without doing that. NASA waited until now to do this for two reasons:

  1. The sun is relatively dim now, and...
  2. Even if the camera is damaged, they already got most of the money shots.
 
I'm pretty happy by how much social media responded to this event, despite Zayn and Harry of One Direction being perched at the top of the trending topics on Twitter for the whole day...

Hope one day society as a whole is more into astronomy and the mysteries of the universe. Maybe if we discover a new planet in our solar system or aliens it'll get peoples attention.

Best wishes.
 

Nelo Ice

Banned
I'm pretty happy by how much social media responded to this event, despite Zayn and Harry of One Direction being perched at the top of the trending topics on Twitter for the whole day...

Hope one day society as a whole is more into astronomy and the mysteries of the universe. Maybe if we discover a new planet in our solar system or aliens it'll get peoples attention.

Best wishes.

Yep that seems like the only thing that'll get people excited. I swear I'm the only one losing it over today's news on my ig and fb :(.
 

elfinke

Member
New Horizon's camera(s) is facing back towards the sun as we speak. It's kinda hard to take pictures of the dark side of Pluto, and its backlit atmosphere, without doing that. NASA waited until now to do this for two reasons:

  1. The sun is relatively dim now, and...
  2. Even if the camera is damaged, they already got most of the money shots.

They chatted about this during the conference yesterday. They were hoping/expecting that the reflected sunlight from Charon would illuminate the dark side of Pluto enough that they would be able to grab some photos.

That is such a fabulously clever way of doing things particularly when it involves a series of objects billions of kilometres away with four and a half hour delay between instructions!
 

Jedi2016

Member
Hope one day society as a whole is more into astronomy and the mysteries of the universe. Maybe if we discover a new planet in our solar system or aliens it'll get peoples attention.
Yeah, I hear ya. I don't think people really understand (or care) just how little we knew about Pluto before this mission. I mean, it really wasn't much beyond "we know it's there" if you think about it. Now look at what we know. I saw one of the animations the other day that showed that Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other. Did we even know that before a week or so ago?

People don't want knowledge anymore, it seems. This may just be "knowledge for the sake of knowledge", but dammit, I like it when I know something today that I didn't know yesterday. I'm waiting with baited breath for the first closeup images, this whole thing is awesome as far as I'm concerned.
 
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