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New Pluto Images from New Horizons


Waspie_Dwarf

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New Pluto Images from New Horizons: It’s Complicated

September 10, 2015

New close-up images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reveal a bewildering variety of surface features that have scientists reeling because of their range and complexity.

“Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we’ve seen in the solar system,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado. “If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top — but that’s what is actually there.”

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I'm not really all that surprised... It's only in Sci-Fi that a planet has one and only one environment or terrain type... Like in Star Wars... Either a planet is entirely desert, or ice or jungle or.... etc...

I will be amazed if we ever find a planet (of any size) that has only one terrain type... (asteroids don't count)...

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I am surprised. I had kinda always imagined the place just a ball of frozen ices with maybe a little rock, too small to have any geology or atmosphere, maybe a few craters but way out there things are far apart. In fact I had not been bothered much when the early decisions came down to skip the place in the first wave of exploration, although when this got changed I was glad too.

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I am surprised. I had kinda always imagined the place just a ball of frozen ices with maybe a little rock, too small to have any geology or atmosphere, maybe a few craters but way out there things are far apart. In fact I had not been bothered much when the early decisions came down to skip the place in the first wave of exploration, although when this got changed I was glad too.

I pictured it much the same Frank and I am sure many of the folks running this mission did as well and are very pleasantly surprised at what they are seeing. A lot more data and images to come so we are just getting started here.

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The edges of the light area look almost like pack ice that has broken up then refrozen. Maybe the light area is from a huge impact which broke through to a liquid layer, which poured out onto the surface a froze flat??

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It's so amazing the images that are coming back to us. What a great achievement

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Yes. These photos are ultra amazing. Think maybe they will promote her back to full-planet status? And what about this, why is it that we have such crystal clear photos of PLUTO. (4.67 billion miles away) While none this clear of our own moon via direct feed? :unsure2:

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Think maybe they will promote her back to full-planet status?

Why? Nothing has changed. The reasons why it was demoted to Dwarf Planet are still valid.

And what about this, why is it that we have such crystal clear photos of PLUTO. (4.67 billion miles away) While none this clear of our own moon via direct feed? :unsure2:

What are you talking about? This is total and utter nonsense

We had better, more detailed images of the Moon than this in the 1960's. Since then 100,000's of detailed images have been taken by US, Russian, European, Japanese, Chinese and Indian orbiters.

As recently as December 2013 the Chinese landed the Chang'e 3 lander and Yutu rover in the Mare Imbrium images and took detailed images from the SURFACE of the Moon.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been operating since 2009 returning new, highly detailed images each day. Images so detailed that Apollo hardware is clearly visible in some of them.

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Crikey it is kicking off in here as usual.

I am a Pluto fan, what I would love to see is what the Sun, Jupiter, Earth, etc look like from this distance.

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Crikey it is kicking off in here as usual.

I am a Pluto fan, what I would love to see is what the Sun, Jupiter, Earth, etc look like from this distance.

I'd think that after the New Horizons went past it would have taken many backward facing pics, and if the Sun was in any of those, then surely the Earth would be in the frame also, as at the distance of Pluto, the Earth would seem very close to the Sun. I don't know the current locations of the other planets but I'd suppose many of them will also be in the frame. The Sun might wash most of them out though.

Edit: I did find this, which would imply that a view to the rear would include Saturn and Earth. Jupiter and Mars I think maybe washed out so they wouldn't be seen without special processing. Neptune and Uranus are off to the side it seems.

New_Horizons-20110423-220222.jpg

Edited by DieChecker
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Yes. These photos are ultra amazing. Think maybe they will promote her back to full-planet status? And what about this, why is it that we have such crystal clear photos of PLUTO. (4.67 billion miles away) While none this clear of our own moon via direct feed? :unsure2:

What do you mean "Direct feed"?

Does not matter I suppose, the pictures of the moon are in incredible detail, I suggest you check out NASA's website.

Pluto was made a Dwarf Planet because we discovered more, Astronomers estimate that there are at least 70,000 icy objects, with the same composition as Pluto, that measure 100 km across or more in the Kuiper Belt. That would make the Solar System ridiculously large, and hard to manage and name. Pluto did get a distinction with that demotion, the term "Plutoid" was coined referring to a body orbiting beyond Neptune that is large enough to be rounded in shape.

_55193708_nasa.jpg

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It seems inconsistent to be persnickety about what Pluto may be called, but to continue referring to "Black holes" and "the Big Bang," -- grossly misleading names, but over time I've gotten use to it and figure it is better to correct one bit of misleading nomenclature when you have the chance even though others are so locked in one must just deal with them.

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I'd think that after the New Horizons went past it would have taken many backward facing pics, and if the Sun was in any of those,

New Horizons' cameras are extremely sensitive, even at the distance of Pluto pointing them directly at the sun would be a very bad idea.

People often have this idea that from Pluto the sun would appear as a bright star, this is not the case, even at that distance it is more than 250 times brighter than a full Moon on Earth.

The Sun might wash most of them out though.

Almost certainly for the inner planets.

Edited by Waspie_Dwarf
typo.
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Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

The latest images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have scientists stunned – not only for their breathtaking views of Pluto’s majestic icy mountains, streams of frozen nitrogen and haunting low-lying hazes, but also for their strangely familiar, arctic look.

This new view of Pluto’s crescent -- taken by New Horizons’ wide-angle Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14 and downlinked to Earth on Sept. 13 -- offers an oblique look across Plutonian landscapes with dramatic backlighting from the sun. It spectacularly highlights Pluto’s varied terrains and extended atmosphere. The scene measures 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) across.

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