New Horizons' First Ultra High Resolution Photos of Pluto Released 52
StartsWithABang writes: After a 9 year journey to Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto this past July, taking so much data that it will take a full 16 months to send it all back. The first of the highest resolution photos ever taken were released by NASA earlier today, and before the data has even been scientifically analyzed, a visual inspection teaches us a number of things about its sedimentary history, its active geology and its transient, eroding mountainous terrain. Perhaps the best part: Pluto is the prototype for the most common type of world in the Universe, even though it's not a planet anymore.
Fascinating (Score:2, Funny)
What an amazing pla....uh...round thing!
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It's okay, the New Horizons team still calls it a planet.
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It's okay, the New Horizons team still calls it a planet.
And we might also note that, by conventional English syntax, "dwarf planet" means a kind of planet, one somewhat smaller than average. Somehow, a lot of people don't seem to understand English syntax well enough to figure that out. ;-)
Of course, we don't have a good enough sample yet to say what size an average planet (without modifiers) might look like.
A planet (Score:1)
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I've seen that referred to as the "Captain Kirk" test. If the Enterprise were to approach a large body in space, and Captain Kirk would look at it and say, "Scotty, beam us down to that planet" (rather than "asteroid" or "comet" or whatever else), then a definition for what's a planet should ideally encompass it. That is, to say, it matches peoples' expectations of what a planet is vs. what an asteroid is - big enough that it's pulled itself into a sphere and in the process released heat causing differentia
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It's the top of BaitsForAClick's bald head. He shaved it because he thinks it makes him look like a badass biker.
Lots of crinkly coastlines (Score:3)
Slartibartfast must be proud.
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Slartibartfast must be proud.
I'd think this terrain appeals more to cold fjord [slashdot.org].
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Pertwee is #1 and Tennant is the second best. Tom Baker is only 3rd IMHO
Commonality and heat pumps (Score:5, Interesting)
It may be true that Kuiper-belt-like objects are the most common kind, but Pluto is probably unique in that it comes relatively close to the sun, and the temporary heat is likely what causes the "pumping action" that shapes Pluto's dynamic geology. Bodies further out may not get enough energy from the sun to drive similar processes.
But being we've only seen one so far*, we can only speculate. Although other large Kuiper bodies are (on average) further away, they may still come close enough on occasion for some of the same heat/cold pump cycling action.
Eris is a possible example. It comes about as close as Pluto does but swings further away. It would be interesting to see how a wider temperature range shapes it.
* Some moons of the gas giants may be from the Kuiper belt, but being close to a large planet shapes them in ways that makes it difficult to know what they originally were like.
Re:Commonality and heat pumps (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also the possibility of much larger objects further out - we're not very good at detecting objects in our solar system at 100+ AU. WISE effectively ruled out Jupiter and Saturn sized bodies a good way out toward the Oort Cloud, but there could be Mars-sized bodies as near as 100-200 AU and Earth-sized bodies as near as a few hundred AU, and potentially Uranus/Neptune sized bodies further than that.
I really look forward to the LSST [wikipedia.org] coming online in a few years - the number of discoveries it should make should be incredible. :) Its not the largest telescope under construction but it's designed to be a data flood - its 3,2 gigapixel camera will produce up to 30 TB of data per night. Virtually anything of significant size that moves in the solar system, it's going to see it. It's expected to, for example, detect 100% of all KBOs larger than 100km, whereas we only know of an estimated 1% of them today.
Re:Commonality and heat pumps (Score:4, Interesting)
Where were you taught this and on what grounds was it based? Look up the sednoids** - one of the three leading theories to explain their orbits is that there's a large (~inner planet sized) body orbiting out there. The other two include a close pass with another star or other large object (although this has fallen out of favor), and other large bodies being near the sun during the formation of the solar system that have since moved apart. But a planet seems to offer the most explanatory value.
** The short of it is that the closest that they ever get to the sun is well too far away for any large known body in our solar system to have scattered them, yet they have highly elliptical orbits. Yet both of the sednoids with established arguments of perihelion (there's a third, V774104, for which it's as of yet unknown) curiously have the same argument of perihelion, which makes single-pass scattering events unlikely, and even ancient scattering events unlikely, as their arguments of perihelion should have been randomized by the weak interactions with the gas giants since then.
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Any idea when an estimate for the perihelion for V774104 will come in? Would LSST help? This is all fascinating stuff - thanks for posting it.
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That certainly may be true, but for larger objects to have avoided detection thus far, they are probably too far away from the Sun to be affected by it often enough.
Even IF such further objects do swing close to the sun on occasion, they probably due so too infrequently for the "heat pump" action to make much difference to their geology.
We've probably spotted all the larger ones with shorter-period orbits, because those have to be fairly clos
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It may be true that Kuiper-belt-like objects are the most common kind, but Pluto is probably unique in that it comes relatively close to the sun, and the temporary heat is likely what causes the "pumping action" that shapes Pluto's dynamic geology. Bodies further out may not get enough energy from the sun to drive similar processes....
If I'm reading you correctly I disagree that that direct heat energy (rays) from the sun is the main driver of geologic processes on Pluto. Pluto's orbit is so far out that the Sun would be about 1000 times dimmer than on earth, so Sun's ability to drive weather and, in turn, geologic processes would be severely limited to say the least. I think it's more likely Pluto's 5 orbiting moons exert varying gravitational forces on Pluto's core creating friction and heat from within the dwarf planet driving geologi
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That would be my local astronomy club.
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A fucking planet? Cool! Where can I get tickets?
The whole business of classifying Pluto as a planet or a dwarf planet is something that the IAU decided on. Really, it's a matter of having a useful definition for what they mean when they say "planet". Pluto doesn't meet one of three main criteria they applied (Admittedly they failed to take your opinion of what it looks like into account). But it's only a rule to them. It applies to their internal conversations and to their communications with the rest of th
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They could have waited. Should have let Pluto stay a planet, officially, until after New Horizons' visit. Could have said that they would wait on the data from New Horizons before making a decision. What was the harm in that, or, why did they want to refine the definition when they did? What was so urgent that they couldn't wait?
Rushing to demote Pluto ahead of the New Horizon's visit is a slap to the US. Pluto is the only planet discovered by the US. It is largely because of that, and because Pluto
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They could have waited. Should have let Pluto stay a planet, officially, until after New Horizons' visit. Could have said that they would wait on the data from New Horizons before making a decision. What was the harm in that, or, why did they want to refine the definition when they did? What was so urgent that they couldn't wait?
New Horizons' visit hasn't changed anything in that regard. Pluto was reclassified - I don't know why you'd think it was a demotion - primarily because it's one of many similar objects out on the fringes of the Solar System, it just happened to be the first one that we discovered. But we had figured out that it had a lot of company well before New Horizons got there and its visit hasn't corrected or altered that knowledge.
Did you know that Ceres, Vesta and a bunch of other asteroids were classed as planets
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If we can send New Horizons to Eris after it finishes sending the Raw images from the Pluto flyby, that should settle the question of whether Pluto is the outermost planet or the innermost KBO.
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If we can send New Horizons to Eris after it finishes sending the Raw images from the Pluto flyby, that should settle the question of whether Pluto is the outermost planet or the innermost KBO.
Eris isn't possible - due to fuel, and other, limitations. Looks like it's next stop KBO 2014 MU69!
Anyone else see the Hobbit door at 0:31? (Score:3)
Anyone else see the Hobbit door at 0:31?
Just wondering...
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. . . and here I was wondering why the Plutonians carved the face of Elvis into the landscape of Pluto . . .
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“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and at -240 degrees Celcius, that means Pluto.”
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It's Fwiffo.
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Are you an "average American"? Then the answer is "less than $2".
6 Miles? (Score:2)
I feel lucky to live in this age. (Score:2)
I know to many it's probably boring, but having grown up as a kid seeing the amazing images from Voyager, seeing these is a real treat, I feel lucky to live in an age where such things are possible.
It's cool on so many nerd levels too. It's cool to be able to see these images, but it's also awesomely cool to be able to dig into the details of how it all works, from communication link budgets to the software to the RTG's etc.
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Where's the SKYWAY??? (Score:1)