Close Pictures of Pluto from a Space Probe

[Still_Small_Voice]

Pluto is about 4,000,000,000 miles away from Earth.  At it's closest approach to Earth Pluto is 2,660,000,000 miles away.  A probe is getting very close and taking pictures of the dwarf planet and it's moon, Charon.  Take a look at the latest picture:

 

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/pluto_charon_color_final.png

[Guest]

If you could hie to Pluto in the twinkling of an eye.. .

 

 

That's pretty cool.

[Palerider]

Wow ... That's awesome

[Still_Small_Voice]

More pictures of Pluto as the probe gets closer.

 

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/one-million-miles-to-go-pluto-is-more-intriguing-than-ever

[Palerider]

Even more amazing.

[Blackmarch]

Tomorrow is supposed to be the big day.

[slamjet]

I remember being taught in my really young youth that Pluto was an ice planet since it was out there so far away.  It's pretty darn neat to see what the real color is.  This is going to be great!

[Backroads]

Any sign of the good photos yet?

[Blackmarch]

[Blackmarch]

unfortunately the data transfer rate is around 1 kilobyte per second. so new content is going to be slow in coming.

[askandanswer]

Here is something similar, for Mars. Its almost like a google earth, but for Mars.

 

http://marstrek.jpl.nasa.gov/

[Blackmarch]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-first-video-pluto-made-175924550.html

This has a full plutonian rotation

[Backroads]

I kind of wish school were in session so I could remind,my kids about this.

[Blackmarch]

PS some see a heart in the bottom half white plains, and some see the disney character pluto XD

[Blackmarch]

Pluto Picture Evolution

[char713]

I read somewhere yesterday that due to the speed at which New Horizons was travelling, if it had hit anything larger than a grain of rice it would have been incapacitated and the mission would have failed. Knowing that, it sounds to me like Heavenly Father quite literally cleared the path for the mission to be successful. 

[Vort]

I read somewhere yesterday that due to the speed at which New Horizons was travelling, if it had hit anything larger than a grain of rice it would have been incapacitated and the mission would have failed. Knowing that, it sounds to me like Heavenly Father quite literally cleared the path for the mission to be successful. 

 

Or space is much more vast and far emptier than we have any good idea of.

[Blackmarch]

I read somewhere yesterday that due to the speed at which New Horizons was travelling, if it had hit anything larger than a grain of rice it would have been incapacitated and the mission would have failed. Knowing that, it sounds to me like Heavenly Father quite literally cleared the path for the mission to be successful. 

sort of. that depends on quite a few factors. it would depend on the relative angles, speed, and location of the particle, as well as how much energy such an impact would impart to the craft and the location of where it struck.

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in other news

Does Pluto have a tail?

Edited July 20, 2015 by Blackmarch

[Blackmarch]

Ok here's a great collection of pictures of Pluto

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-pluto-images-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-it-s-complicated

[Guest]

I am particularly pleased to observe that Pluto is far more interesting and complex than a mere chunk of ice as some have described it for decades.  (I wonder what it might be like to look at the stars from the surface on Pluto as opposed to the surface on Earth? Perhaps not all that different except for the absence of light pollution?)

Edited September 11, 2015 by UT.starscoper

[Vort]

I am particularly pleased to observe that Pluto is far more interesting and complex than a mere chunk of ice as some have described it for decades.  (I wonder what it might be like to look at the stars from the surface on Pluto as opposed to the surface on Earth? Perhaps not all that different except for the absence of light pollution?)

 

Yes, the same except for lack of light pollution. To the naked eye, or even with a small or medium-sized telescope, the stars (other than the sun) would all look exactly the same. If you had a big telescope on Pluto, you could see some minor parallax with nearby stars, but you'd have to look pretty hard.

 

The big change (other than lack of light pollution and a different, smaller moon) would be the planets, which would all be sunward and would be difficult to see. The giant planets might possibly be visible, though I have my doubts. Any native Plutonians might not ever realize that their planet orbits a star with other planets.

[Traveler]

I am particularly pleased to observe that Pluto is far more interesting and complex than a mere chunk of ice as some have described it for decades.  (I wonder what it might be like to look at the stars from the surface on Pluto as opposed to the surface on Earth? Perhaps not all that different except for the absence of light pollution?)

 

The sun would not be the brightest star in the sky – a semi nearby star (Betelgeuse – 640 million light years away) would be the brightest star in the sky.  Standing on the surface of Pluto would be more of a problem than one might think.  There is no current technology that could be utilized without extra heat being added to keep humans from freezing in temperatures about 20 degrees above absolute zero.  If something happened to the heat source you would be frozen in two or three seconds – even inside a nice toasty space ship – if it’s heat source failed.  Even our breath would instantly freeze and become liquid.  Ice formed from water would be so frozen that it would be harder than diamonds.   

[Vort]

The sun would not be the brightest star in the sky – a semi nearby star (Betelgeuse – 640 million light years away) would be the brightest star in the sky.  Standing on the surface of Pluto would be more of a problem than one might think.  There is no current technology that could be utilized without extra heat being added to keep humans from freezing in temperatures about 20 degrees above absolute zero.  If something happened to the heat source you would be frozen in two or three seconds – even inside a nice toasty space ship – if it’s heat source failed.  Even our breath would instantly freeze and become liquid.  Ice formed from water would be so frozen that it would be harder than diamonds.   

 

I appreciate your enthusiasm, Traveler, but this is mostly incorrect.

• Betelgeuse is roughly 640 light-years distant. 640 million light-years would put it outside our galaxy, and in fact very far outside our local group of galaxies, which is only about 10 million light-years across.

   

• Even from Pluto, the sun would be by far the brightest object in the sky, much brighter than our full moon. This site has a good explanation.

   

• The temperature on Pluto is clearly not survivable. However, any decent insulation -- even a layer of air trapped between walls -- would be sufficient to prevent immediate freezing. It would take minutes or hours (depending on how good your insulation was) to get to lethal levels of temperature, were your heating unit to die.

   

• The atmosphere on Pluto is so thin that, in Earth terms, it would be considered a vacuum. In a perfect vacuum, heat loss would come only from radiant heat. The surface of Pluto is clearly not anything like a "perfect vacuum", but it is also very far from an Earth-like situation where ambient atmosphere or water would actively conduct away heat in a short time. You would lose heat steadily but slowly; you certainly would not freeze to death inside your spaceship within seconds of the heat source going away.

   

• If exposed to the naked Plutonian atmosphere, our breath would indeed freeze immediately. It would freeze into ice, though, not condense into liquid. The four primary components of our breath are nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, and carbon dioxide, all of which have a higher freezing point than even the warmest temperature of Pluto's surface. (The fifth-most prevalent constituent of our Earth-based breath is argon, which also has a freezing point well above that of Pluto's surface.)

   

• Even near absolute zero, ice is nowhere near as hard as diamond. Not even close. Its hardness at very low temperatures and certain crystalline structures approaches that of concrete.