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Pluto New Horizons |OT| New images. Pluto/Charon still geologically active
- Thread starter GK86
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Obliterator
Member
My favorite has always been Jupiter:
There has always been something oddly creepy about Jupiter for me
Parallax Scroll
Banned
Set that shit to eerie music and it's even better.
Who remembers the Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989?
It's about that time again!
It's so strange how pale and consistent this picture of Uranus is (har har, but really). It's like if you used the paint bucket to fill light blue on a planet. I realize they took better pictures later but it's so featureless.
renegade_dewitt
Member
<300,000 miles now from its closest flyby to Pluto!
Its a giant laser. Takes while for it to warm up.
I figure giant planet - giant storm takes a while to wind down
titiklabingapat
Member
It's probably because there is virtually nothing between the planet and the camera to obstruct the view. It's almost all light out there. It looks so clear out there in space.
That and planets are so large it's impossible to comprehend the scale of the object you're looking at.
Obliterator
Member
For sure, no matter how much you know about space you still can't comprehend it. The greatest scientific minds at NASA still don't realize the scale at which they are looking. There is nothing near planets to give you an idea scale of how utterly gigantic the thing you are looking at is, especially the gas giants.
If you could truly see the scale of what you are looking at, like say the earth next to Jupiter / Saturn your mind would be blown. Obviously though that's impossible as everyone on Earth would be dead haha
AngmarsKing701
Member
The fact that we have captured Jupiter being struck by asteroids is just awesome. Shoemaker-Levy in '94 and then this doozie in 2012: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q5KXdvvvfQ
Obliterator
Member
Earth sized asteroid? I don't believe there is any asteroid's in the solar system the size of Earth.....huge yes but no Earth sized unless I'm missing something?
WAR recon zero
Banned
Question, with the sun so far away, if we are near will planets appear as bright as the pictures to us or just really dark to the naked eye?
The Chosen One
Member
Keep in mind, what may seem like lifetimes for us is just a blink of an eye to non-earthly objects.
The Great Red Spot storm has been around for about 200-400 earth years, which is only 20-40 Jovian years. And supposedly the storm will dissipate in another 20-40 Jovian years. Considering gas giants like Jupiter are billions of years old, this is only a micro-scopic drop in the bucket in terms of time.
My point is, a Jovian entity might see the Great Red Spot the same way we see a brief afternoon thunderstorm. When it comes to space, you have to think on a completely different scale.
Cosmo Clock 21
Banned
Who says planets have to be formed naturally, though.
I think if I remember correctly, the explosion was the size of the earth, not the asteroid itself.
Slayer-33
Liverpool-2
If that thing hit us we'd gotten rekt
I don't think the recent pictures of Pluto and Charon from New Horizons are overexposed. The perceived brightness would be similar to the pictures if you looked outside a window on a spacecraft that flew by Pluto.
Man, that's crazy. And imagine the sheer size of it.
Voyager is old news, but the program has still been making weirdly relevant observations due to sheer location. Voyager 1 may be a relic of 1970s tech kept alive by a faltering chunk of plutonium, but it's a relic of 1970s tech that's way the hell out in the interstellar medium, and it's still talking to us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXRrpdYlgrY
The issue is complicated by atmospheres not really being 2-spheres.
Chuckie
Member
Are there even better pics? :O How come I have never seen any of these.
I've been out of the loop for like.... 20 years or so :/
Just discovered awesome pictures of Europa and Triton. I needs moar.
I assume all pictures can be found on the NASA site?
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/07131311-pluto-first-science.html
Looks like Pluto's diameter is bigger than they thought, making it bigger than Eris and therefore the biggest dwarf planet, or dare I say.. The smallest planet?
Looks like Pluto's diameter is bigger than they thought, making it bigger than Eris and therefore the biggest dwarf planet, or dare I say.. The smallest planet?
No.
hamauzu kaito
Member
So how possible is it that they are making mistakes about Eris` diameter and mass? In the article linked she makes it sound as if they have concrete data for Eris.
HellBlazer
Member
Pluto's atmosphere is what made it difficult to precisely measure its diameter from Earth (I expect it distorts the light coming from Pluto a little bit), while Eris doesn't have an atmosphere so it doesn't have that problem.
sono
Gold Member
Now surveying the outermost Pluto moon Hydra..
Of the 5 pluto moons, Hydra and Nix were only recently discovered in 2005 by The Hubble Space Telescope
The other 3 moons are Charon and Styx and Kerberos. Charon is so large in relation to Pluto that the gravity center (Barycenter) of the Pluto Charon combination lies outside Pluto!
Its seems incredible to me that Pluto is so relatively small (less than our moon and one fifteenth the gravity of earth.,that itself would be capable of having no less than 5 moons)
4 hours 18 mins to closest Pluto encounter..
Of the 5 pluto moons, Hydra and Nix were only recently discovered in 2005 by The Hubble Space Telescope
The other 3 moons are Charon and Styx and Kerberos. Charon is so large in relation to Pluto that the gravity center (Barycenter) of the Pluto Charon combination lies outside Pluto!
Its seems incredible to me that Pluto is so relatively small (less than our moon and one fifteenth the gravity of earth.,that itself would be capable of having no less than 5 moons)
4 hours 18 mins to closest Pluto encounter..
Yeah! Vacation time on Venus!!
Man, that sounds amazing to have experienced. Thanks for sharing both of you.
God damn, I miss Carl Sagan.
eyeball_kid
Member
To be fair, some of the most interesting objects in our solar system are moons (Io's intense volcanic activity, Europa's, Ganymede's, and Enceladus's saltwater oceans, and Titan's hydrocarbon lakes. Seven are bigger than Pluto and would be planets in their own right, if not bound in the gravity of the huge gas giants.
And to bring it back to New Horizons, it caught this amazing animation of a volcano on Io spewing material 330km above the surface when NH used Jupiter's gravity for a speed boost. When you consider Io is about the same size as our moon, imagine looking up in the sky and seeing a volcano eruption like that.
Jezbollah
Member
Who remembers the Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989?
It's about that time again!
Hell yes.
I remember in 86 staying up to watch Sir Patrick Moore's Sky At Night episodes on BBC 1 full with excitement.
That being said, please watch and enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t0exJznEZg
Richard C. Hoagland's special 5 hour Pluto broadcast has started (Pluto - The Last Encounter on DMDN). Art Bell's new show starts airing soon!
no_fun_allowed.jpg?
And you are wrong about Art Bell. It doesn't make you a kook, if a part your job is to interview kooks. Art is very much a mainstream science guy.
Why would you put links to kooks like Hoagland and Art Bell in this thread?
no_fun_allowed.jpg?
And you are wrong about Art Bell. It doesn't make you a kook, if a part your job is to interview kooks. Art is very much a mainstream science guy.
Miggytronz
Gold Member
Giggity!
Yes, it is.
Planet is largely sulfur.
EDIT: Currently 37,000 miles out from Pluto now, with NH making observations of Charon at the moment.
Chuckie
Member
That is awesome.
OdysseusVA
Banned
So we won't see anything until Wednesday or Thursday?
A little over 40 minutes to go.
We will probably get one picture tonight, but the majority of stuff when come in on Wednesday and beyond.
We will probably get one picture tonight, but the majority of stuff when come in on Wednesday and beyond.
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