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2015/04/15 15:55:16
Subject: New Horizons - First Color Image of Pluto and Charon
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Thane of Dol Guldur
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New Horizons Sends First Color Image of Pluto and Charon
by Nadia Dreake, National Geographic
( http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/14/new-horizons-sends-first-color-image-of-pluto-and-charon/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20150415ph-plutoimage&utm_campaign=Content&sf8605943=1)
After 3 billion miles and nearly 10 years on the road, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly by dwarf planet Pluto in July. Until then, the spacecraft is zooming ever closer to the frosty world and its five known moons, covering nearly a million miles each day.
Set for July 14, the flyby promises to be an epic final chapter in the first reconnaissance of the classical solar system. So far, we’ve been to all the other planets and several of the enigmatic worlds strewn in the space between. But we haven’t yet visited the former ninth planet or any of its siblings on the fringe of the easily observable solar system. Pluto represents a new type of world, waiting to be explored.
“Nothing like this has been done in a quarter-century, and nothing like this is planned by any space agency, ever again,” says Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator. “Watch us turn a point of light into a planet.”
On April 9, New Horizons captured this image of Pluto and Charon from a distance of 71 million miles. It’s the first color image taken by a spacecraft on Pluto’s doorstep. Though the dwarf planet and its Texas-size moon (which is so large the pair actually form a binary planet) still look like fuzzy blobs, seeing them through New Horizons’ colored eyes for the first time is exciting.
“You can see immediately a number of major differences: Pluto seems to be very bright. It seems to be redder. Charon [in the lower left] is now dimmer than Pluto,” says Jim Green, NASA’s director of planetary science. “These are already tantalizing glimpses of this system.”
Nobody’s really sure what Pluto has in store. But we don’t have too long to wait: New Horizons will start beaming back even better images of the dwarf planet before we know it. In May, the spacecraft will be close enough to return photos that are better than the current gold-standard for Pluto — a series of images snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2002 and 2003. And when the spacecraft zips by the frozen world, it will be able to see features as small as the wharfs in New York’s Hudson River or the lakes in the city’s Central Park.
So get ready, Pluto. We’re coming for your closeup.
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2015/04/15 15:59:46
Subject: New Horizons - First Color Image of Pluto and Charon
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Shas'o Commanding the Hunter Kadre
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Hell, its about time.
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2015/04/15 21:02:55
Subject: New Horizons - First Color Image of Pluto and Charon
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Decrepit Dakkanaut
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It's not blue?!?!?!!!??!!?!?!??
#broken heart
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2015/04/16 00:11:51
Subject: Re:New Horizons - First Color Image of Pluto and Charon
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Shas'ui with Bonding Knife
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Amazing stuff, i can't believe how far the space program has come.
I think it's amazing that we're staring at the first color photographs ever taken of Pluto and it's moons.
Great stuff, can't wait to see more. I hope we get some awesome high res close ups like we have of some of the other planets.
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 daedalus wrote:
I mean, it's Dakka. I thought snide arguments from emotion were what we did here.
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2015/04/16 10:11:51
Subject: New Horizons - First Color Image of Pluto and Charon
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Highlord with a Blackstone Fortress
Adrift within the vortex of my imagination.
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Why cant you tell the colour of Pluto from Hubble?
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n'oublie jamais - It appears I now have to highlight this again.
It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. By the juice of the brew my thoughts aquire speed, my mind becomes strained, the strain becomes a warning. It is by tea alone I set my mind in motion. |
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2015/04/16 10:18:32
Subject: New Horizons - First Color Image of Pluto and Charon
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Thane of Dol Guldur
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Here's a couple Pluto images from Hubble. I'm not sure what the story on these is. I.E. Whether this is "natural" color, or whether the color was transposed by using other data.
Source: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/solar_system/pluto/
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This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2015/04/16 10:21:28
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2015/04/16 11:00:44
Subject: New Horizons - First Color Image of Pluto and Charon
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Colonel
This Is Where the Fish Lives
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The best images we currently have (the ones Jasper linked) are computer generated based on data from Hubble. The actual image from Hubble is mere pixels wide but still contains enough data to generate the enhanced surface maps we have.
The Hubble is really not suited for planetary observation, especially of something as small and dim as Pluto.
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 d-usa wrote:"When the Internet sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending posters that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing strawmen. They're bringing spam. They're trolls. And some, I assume, are good people."
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