New Horizons phones home

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33531811

by aestetix • 11 years ago

325 85 11 years ago

This is the most incredible picture I have ever seen. In May, the best picture of Pluto was a couple blown up pixels. Now, it looks like a render from a Pixar movie.

https://twitter.com/tothur/status/620601134651166720/photo/1

jgrahamc• 11 years ago

The picture on the left is 8-bit Pluto.

steckerbrett• 11 years ago

I'm still amazed we knew about its existence any time prior, the best picture we had in may is just 9 pixels wide. There's more visual information in Google's favicon.

colechristensen• 11 years ago

However, it's not quite true.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/pluto-2010...

Shows better the previous best.

pserwylo• 11 years ago

For a more interactive version of this, check out the visualization by ABC News in Australia:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-09/pluto-comes-into-focus...

This shows a time slider, where you can see the different images, along with the time and distance from Pluto. They have been pretty quick to update it with new images too, so I look forward to the final image(s?) being added.

hohenheim2• 11 years ago

Any idea why the colour changes from grey to sepia between 12'th and 13'th July?

frikk• 11 years ago

Astro-noob here. Why can't we get better pictures from our telescopes, given that we can take what seems to be high quality pictures of things much further away? Is it because of how "small" pluto is, versus say a large galaxy or nebula.

aperiodic• 11 years ago

It is exactly that: Pluto is a very tiny astronomical object. Galaxies, nebulae, and such are much further away than Pluto, but that is more than made up for by how mind-boggingly large they are. For example, The Andromeda Galaxy is about six full moons wide as viewed from Earth[1].

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/01/01/moon_and...

justin66• 11 years ago

Someone else mentioned the relative size but also the other stuff you're thinking of emits its own light. Plato is just a rock.

mercurialshark3• 11 years ago

Why does the BBC refuse to capitalize the letters in NASA as an acronym? Is it British grammar or do they not realize it's in all caps?

_asummers• 11 years ago

From their style guide[0]:

Acronyms

Use the abbreviated form of a title without explanation only if there is no chance of any misunderstanding (eg UN, Nato, IRA, BBC). Otherwise, spell it out in full at first reference, or introduce a label (eg the public sector union Unite).

Where you would normally pronounce the abbreviation as a string of letters - an initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR, NUT). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec).

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style-guide/art...

mercurialshark3• 11 years ago

Great answer, thanks!

greenyoda• 11 years ago

That's apparently correct British usage. From The Guardian Style Guide:[1]

"Use all capitals if an abbreviation is pronounced as the individual letters (an initialism): BBC, CEO, US, VAT, etc; if it is an acronym (pronounced as a word) spell out with initial capital, eg Nasa, Nato, Unicef, unless it can be considered to have entered the language as an everyday word, such as awol, laser and, more recently, asbo, pin number and sim card."

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a

joshuapants• 11 years ago

Do they actually pronounce it as "vee-ay-tee" instead of just "vat?"

pdabbadabba• 11 years ago

From the BBC style guide:

Where you would normally pronounce the abbreviation as a string of letters - an initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR, NUT). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/article/art201307021...

cgorshing• 11 years ago

who knows

artursapek• 11 years ago

I can't wait, hopefully they get the higher resolution ones tomorrow!

idlewords• 11 years ago

I believe tomorrow we get a higher-resolution Charon and a similar resolution picture of Pluto. The incredible Emily Lakdawalla has a full list of what's coming when:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/0624055...

ashmud• 11 years ago

Nice "not-planets" montage by Emily Lakdawalla here:

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/0714133...

multibear• 11 years ago

'"With this mission, we have visited every single planet in the Solar System," said Nasa's administrator Charles Bolden.'

Uhhhhhhh... Should somebody tell him?

breitling• 11 years ago

I don't follow...have we not visited all the planets? Perhaps he means we have flown past them all?

mercurialshark3• 11 years ago

Pluto = dwarf planet, so it's irrelevant to statement. Also, we certainly haven't visited all dwarf planets.

Thorondor• 11 years ago

Should somebody tell him?

Bolden says he still considers Pluto a planet. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11739763/Pluto...

supermatt3• 11 years ago

Considering the definition of a plutoid is effectively "a planet further away than neptune", I'm inclined to shun the plutoists and agree with him.

fpgaminer• 11 years ago

Here's an enhanced version of the color photo of Pluto released today (taken on July 13th, 768,000 km): https://i.imgur.com/BiR2WNO.png

zapdrive• 11 years ago

It would be awesome if artificial structures are discovered on Pluto. What would be mankind's next step, if say life is discovered on Pluto?

douche• 11 years ago

Clearly, we would be all about the heechee land grab.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heechee

rz2k2• 11 years ago

That's an interesting idea. On one hand I would think that something intelligent living with that little energy available per square meter would operate very slowly, such that we could communicate with it like a correspondence chess game. However, on the other hand that it alternates between pretty different climates every 250 years suggest the type of pressures that lead to different eras in Earth's history where life was predominantly smaller or more 'simple' before becoming bigger and more complex again. Maybe at low temperatures though, 250 years is a short hibernation.

soperj• 11 years ago

This implys that the only way that organism can obtain energy would be from the sun, and not from some internal process on Pluto.

lfowles• 11 years ago

Sounds a bit like the planet from A Deepness in the Sky. Are the spiders in hibernation now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky

feelnaren• 11 years ago

Gaint leap

Lennu• 11 years ago

It amazes me that we humans have made something that has travelled over seven billion kilometers in cold dark emptiness and sends us highly detailed photographs of things we have never seen before.

solotronics• 11 years ago

Totally amazing! Perhaps one day with hard work and lots of luck humanity may reach to the stars and beyond.

Yhippa• 11 years ago

Ad astra per aspera.

junto• 11 years ago

I assume that the probe is travelling in a straight line? I also assume that each planet is busily orbiting the sun. How on earth (pardon the pun) did they work out the exact speed the probe should travel at (I also assume it accelerates) in order to fly past each planet and moon at exactly the right point of time and space?

incepted• 11 years ago

Simple ballistics. The probe is still subject to gravity and it can receive trajectory adjustments as needed. It's not like it was launched ten years ago and then it was on its own: it's been piloted remotely from the Earth as necessary.

It's a remarkable achievement but the science behind it has been known and used successfully for decades.

azernik• 11 years ago

Have a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_mechanics

The short version is - for the most part these trajectories can be calculated with a decent degree of accuracy with relatively simple equations. Rocket engines tend to give acceleration in short bursts (which simplifies the computations a lot as well), so New Horizons was launched out of Earth orbit at about 16km/s and since then has only fired its own engines for short correction burns.

jobigoud• 11 years ago

I think you misunderstood the statement about "visiting every single planet in the Solar System with this mission".

It's not meant to imply that this specific mission visited all the planets, just that this mission completes the achievement. (In his opinion).

danieltillett3• 11 years ago

What I find interesting is how few craters there are compared to other planets (yes I know pluto is no longer a planet). Does this reflect that meteor bombardment is rare in the outer solar system, or that there is some sort of geological process going on that is removing craters?

LordIllidan• 11 years ago

Perhaps Pluto's gravitational field is not strong enough to trap meteors?

danieltillett3• 11 years ago

It is not a matter of trapping - even asteroids which are much smaller have many more craters.

JupiterMoon4• 11 years ago

Initial interpretation of the first image apparently suggested an active (geologically speaking) surface. This would tend to remove visible craters. Think Venus (highly active surface) vs the Moon.

danieltillett3• 11 years ago

Interesting. I wonder is powering this as there is no obvious energy source - maybe tidal?

maaku3• 11 years ago

Pluto may have a young surface due to the collision which created its moons.

peeters• 11 years ago

Would it be so round were this the case? I assumed it would take a long time for gravity to make a planet's surface round, much longer than it would take to accumulate a bunch of impact craters.

ChrisGranger• 11 years ago

That infographic appears to have the colors for Mars and Jupiter reversed...

chrisBob2• 11 years ago

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-new-horizons-phones-...

It seems strange that the highest ranked story about Pluto for the past few days has been from BBC not NASA. Check out www.nasa.gov for the original press release and updates as they come in.

callumprentice• 11 years ago

I love that we have an operational “deep space network” - emotional moment as New Horizons reconnects after Pluto fly past last night https://amp.twimg.com/v/e360e83b-b3dd-4862-9a7f-7b111b33e27d

New Horizons phones home

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