Bear Down Wildcats

I'm starting a thread on this since it's a big deal and I'm more geeked about this than almost anything in years. First probe to explore Pluto and other trans neptunian objects. In a couple months it will fly by Pluto at only a couple thousand miles from the surface. Before that our best picture of Pluto was this from the Hubble


New horizons took its first picture of Pluto(and Charon) a couple days ago from only 115 million kilometres away after traveling over 5 billion kilometres

Very cool. Look forward to the updates.

Newest imagery taken a little while ago. Should be within 100,000,000 kilometres now

Always loved Pluto. Intrigued

Longhorned wrote:Always loved Pluto. Intrigued

Underachiever. Didn't have what it takes to remain a planet.

Mid-major. Don't even play football there. Get a conference, Pluto!

Only about 3 weeks until the fly by. Latest pictures

13 days from flyby. New horizons is still 60+ times farther from Pluto than the moon is from earth. Latest non zoomed in non enhanced photo

Full plutonian day

New horizons had a malfunction Saturday that shut down operations and put it into safe mode. contact was regained but it will take until probably Thursday to reorientate it and get it ready for the flyby, mostly since it transmits data at 1 kb/s and has a communication relay time of 9 hours. But this is the most recent color image from Friday

Newest picture from yesterday. Probe is only about 15-20 times the earth-moon distance from Pluto now. At least I'm excited about it

Keep posting, you aren't alone. This shit is fucking cool.

Now for the bad news...in the 2 days prior to 2 days after the flyby when it's closest...we'll only see about 20 pictures. Some of which aren't high quality. Issue again comes back to the messaging relay time and limitations on data transfer. The probe can only either send or receive data; it can't do both simultaneously. During the flyby it's going to be taking hundreds or thousands of pictures and other data readings. It then has to sort through everything, organize it and prepare it to send it on its 4.5 hour journey to earth at 1 kilobyte per second. It may be until September before we really get a lot of the better data and high quality photos.

What's September in the scope of human history? I can't wait to see the images.

No kidding. Plus it's part of the plan. It will be an amazing thing for humankind to behold. Until then I can just look at pictures of boobs and stuff.

from here: http://www.goominet.com/unspeakable-vault/

Heard the little guy went , 'Bzzzzt...' and shut down for a short while recently, which, as you might expect, really freaked out everyone on the project team.

We should launch our own probe.

I think you should share some of those pictures you mentioned up above. Where's Officer Craig, anyway?

Less than 4 days from the flyby now. Surface features are starting to emerge. In this picture 1 pixel is 17 miles across

Looks like a giant polar ice pack.

Charon has me more intrigued than Pluto to be honest.




Mass Relay. . . Mass Relay. . . Mass Relay. . .Mass Relay. . . Mass Relay. . . Mass Relay. . . Please?

Someone took all the images from May 26 to July 11 and animated them to show the approach

About 17 hours from the flyby and new horizons is only about 2 earth/moon distances away now. Latest color(ized) image of Pluto and Charon

Heard on NPR today that it looks like Pluto is a bit larger than previously believed.

Slightly larger in volume, but not in mass. So it's less dense than we thought. It's actually bigger in volume but smaller in mass than Eris, another of the dwarf planets. This is one of the reasons we created the new designation.

Just from what we've found in the last 15 years, there are probably dozens and dozens of near Pluto size objects in the kuiper belt

Pluto was always shown as blue on the picture I used to refer to as a kid. I have no idea why that was so, but for some reason it makes me surprised that it isn't blue.

Probe passed by exactly 5 hours ago. Only going to get a few pictures in the next few days from the black and white camera. They are waiting for the all clear signal from the probe in like 8 hours. The vast majority of the science data and pictures won't start being transmitted until September 2nd. Last picture sent to earth before the flyby

Very cool stuff!

Longhorned wrote:Pluto was always shown as blue on the picture I used to refer to as a kid. I have no idea what that was so, but for some reason it makes me surprised that it isn't blue.

Haha, just because it was the super far-away freezing ice planet I guess, so they made it blue like Arnold in Batman.

These pictures really are awesome so far.

It's an agonizing wait right now since technically we don't know if the probe is alive. It's currently gathering data as it's speeding away from Pluto (after all that build-up..it's already over 120000 miles away now) but it's hours until it sends its signal saying it survived and starts transmitting the few pictures it will tomorrow.

Will the probe be able to transmit pictures of any other bodies on its deep-space trajectory before it officially croaks?

ASUHATER! wrote:Last picture sent to earth before the flyby

I hereby petition Pluto to be renamed Skee-Ball.

catgrad97 wrote:Will the probe be able to transmit pictures of any other bodies on its deep-space trajectory before it officially croaks?

ASUHATER! wrote:Last picture sent to earth before the flyby

I hereby petition Pluto to be renamed Skee-Ball.

They allowed a fuel budget to try to fly near another kuiper belt object. They've narrowed it down to three candidates and will decide in the coming months if they can and which it will be. If they do, it won't be until 2018-2019 before it gets there.

Pluto as seen by the Hubble several years ago vs. Last night

I'm a little worried about the latest close up of Pluto.

That's no dwarf planet!

Pluto will always be a planet in my eyes.

Me too. It was still a planet when I took an astronomy class at the U of A

If I were on Pluto, I'd assume that probe was being flown by little intelligent beings inside. This is why we should be careful in our assumptions.

first closer pictures coming out.

Close up of surface


First close up of the moon Charon

It really is amazing just how young they think some of those mountain ranges are.

The canyon you see on Charon's right side is 6 miles deep. On Pluto those mountains you see are 11000 feet tall and are most likely made of water ice with coatings of methane and nitrogen, possibly from cryovolcanoes. The surface is almost crater free which means it is extremely new and young (less than 100 million years). Something is providing heat on Pluto but they don't know what yet.

ASUHATER! wrote:The canyon you see on Charon's right side is 6 miles deep. On Pluto those mountains you see are 11000 feet tall and are most likely made of water ice with coatings of methane and nitrogen, possibly from cryovolcanoes. The surface is almost crater free which means it is extremely new and young (less than 100 million years). Something is providing heat on Pluto but they don't know what yet.

Underground Mi-go cities of course.

Oh, and few words from Ray Bradbury. . .