New Horizons Probe Captures Images At Record Distance From Earth (engadget.com) 55
jwhyche writes: The New Horizons probe has captured the farthermost images of Earth. The probe took images of Earth from a distance of over 3.79 billion miles on December 5th, 2017. This beats the image Voyager 1 captured 27 years ago. The Voyager image was taken at a distance of 3.75 billion miles and has become known as the "Pale Blue Dot" photo. Engadget notes that this new record is likely to be broken again within a matter of months. "The [New Horizons spacecraft] is slated to swing by another Kuiper Belt object (2014 MU69) on January 1st, 2019 and record more imagery in the process," reports Engadget. "So long as the mission goes according to plan, New Horizons could hold on to its lead for a long time."
Looking back into the past (Score:2)
That works out to a bit over five and a half light-hours... good lord *choke*! We can use this probe to see INTO EARTH'S... radio... transmission... past. A bit.
Re:Looking back into the past (Score:5, Funny)
What a vanity mission! We can see the influence of the Facebook indoctrinated generation here:
We sent up an expensive space probe to take a selfie!
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Actually, if this worked with enough clarity I bet that the CIA would love it.
"Dammit, I wish we had a wiretap on this guy three hours ago!"
Re:Looking back into the past (Score:4, Funny)
We sent up an expensive space probe to take a selfie!
Once upon a time there was a plan to build a space elevator. Next project: Space Selfie Stick
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The article is crap (Score:2)
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40,000,000 miles is quite far
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40,000,000 miles is quite far
Not really. 40M miles won't even get you to Mars.
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Your links don't really prove anything, but this one does: https://www.space.com/16875-ho... [space.com]
To your point the theoretical shortest distance to Mars in ~33M miles, but the planets' orbits rarely ever get that close to each other. The average distance between Earth and Mars orbits is ~140M miles, and launches use the most fuel efficient path, which [counter-intuitively] is not the shortest path. So ShanhaiBill is correct that 40M miles doesn't get you to Mars.
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When was the last time you travelled 40 million miles? Never? I thought so.
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You forgot a few things.
Depending where you are on the surface of Earth, you travel up to 40,075km every day.
There's also the orbit our solar system takes around our galaxy and the movement of our galaxy in the universe.
You also forgot this is a record from Earth, so none of that matters.
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Well, I racked up 11,972,000,000 [astrosociety.org] miles last year, so I don't know what planet you've been living on, but it's clearly an awful long way from here by now.
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About half an hour ago, actually [astrosociety.org].
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Furthermore, this is a relatively pointless "record" with respect to the pointlessness of records. If you want to "break" it, just design a probe to break it. The record is just getting broken incidentally or because the probe is in a position during its mission to snap the photo.
a better link please? (Score:5, Informative)
The Engadget page linked has 9 trackers and 21 scripts according to my sources. Slashdot often sends us to Engadget. Ever wonder why? The NASA page has the same information without the crap and far fewer trackers and scripts. But maybe NASA doesn't kick back anything to Slashdot. I don't know but I'm really getting tired of these crappy links to second class news sources. Try this site: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/n... [nasa.gov]
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Neither the Engadget site nor the NASA site load at all without Javascript enabled. Is there any version of this news available in standards-compliant HTML?
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Correction (Score:5, Informative)
The pale blue dot is still the farthest away picture of earth itself.
Re:Correction (Score:5, Informative)
This article is the most poorly worded article I have read in a long time. It was not at all clear what they meant. However, the NASA link is quite clear.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-captures-record-breaking-images-in-the-kuiper-belt [nasa.gov]
It is not the farthest picture from earth. It was not taken from earth, or even near earth. It is not the picture itself they are talking about. It is the space probe that took it. New Horizons was the furthest from Earth of any space probe that has taken a picture (any picture).
Voyager 1 was 3.75 billion miles away from Earth when it took a picture. It just so happens it was a picture of Earth.
New Horizons was 3.79 billion miles away from Earth when it took a picture. (That is the record they are talking about).
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Shouldn't it have been a line segment, not a disc? (Score:2)
Re:Shouldn't it have been a line segment, not a di (Score:5, Funny)
You're seeing it from above because the turtle is shy.
Yo momma's so fat... (Score:2)
When New Horizons spotted her from the Kuiper Belt, astronomers assigned her object code "2018 YMFA"!
Let's enhance it! (Score:4, Funny)
That's some pretty impressive zoom, but can we enhance it? [youtu.be]
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
...
miles? (Score:2)
me and 6.7 billions people does not understand miles.
You mean 40.8 AU ?
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You mean 40.8 AU ?
You aussies need to impose your units everywhere.
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Farthest FROM Earth, not OF Earth (Score:3)
The New Horizons probe has captured the farthermost images of Earth. The probe took images of Earth
No it didn't. The images are not of Earth.
Point the probe camera back towards earth! (Score:2)