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New Horizons will flyby Pluto on July 14th

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The Sum of Zero

The Sum of Zero

Member
DrForester said:
NASA released some new images, must have been taken before the glitch.

D4bI1vy.png
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Someone tell ThinkGeek to fix the color of their Pluto glass.

GDRfyzj.jpg
 
G

G.ZZZ

Member
That color is false, pluto is probably grey-white like all icy planetoids and moons. Being colored is usually sign of atmosphere or geological activity which i doubt pluto has.
 
GameSeeker

GameSeeker

Member
G.ZZZ said:
That color is false, pluto is probably grey-white like all icy planetoids and moons. Being colored is usually sign of atmosphere or geological activity which i doubt pluto has.
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Incorrect. The color pictures are based on data from the Ralph camera on the New Horizons spacecraft with uses different color filters to determine the actual color of Pluto. Pluto is actually a reddish color, much like Mars. It's largest moon, Charon, is grey.
 
W

Walshicus

Member
G.ZZZ said:
That color is false, pluto is probably grey-white like all icy planetoids and moons. Being colored is usually sign of atmosphere or geological activity which i doubt pluto has.
Click to expand...
While the images are enhanced, the colour looks to be correct. Wiki has a quote suggesting it's between Mars' and Io's rednesses.
 
I

ibyea

Banned
G.ZZZ said:
That color is false, pluto is probably grey-white like all icy planetoids and moons. Being colored is usually sign of atmosphere or geological activity which i doubt pluto has.
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Being made of ice doesn't mean the exterior is not going to be covered by something else.
 
S

Skeletron

Member
I'm curious, how can we have photographs of nebulae abd stuff from lightyears away but not up close shots of Pluto? Can't the Hubble just zoom in?
 
G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Skeletron said:
I'm curious, how can we have photographs of nebulae abd stuff from lightyears away but not up close shots of Pluto? Can't the Hubble just zoom in?
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This is a good way of looking at it:

liliththepale said:
No, it has to do with scale. Like if the Pillars of Creation are 100K times as far from Earth as Pluto is, but it's 100MM times larger than Pluto, then we're going to be able to get a picture 1000 times clearer. Those aren't the right numbers, but you get the idea.
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P

PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
Skeletron said:
I'm curious, how can we have photographs of nebulae abd stuff from lightyears away but not up close shots of Pluto? Can't the Hubble just zoom in?
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The same reason you can get a nice shot of a mountain from 20 miles away but try and get a dog catching a frisbee from 20 feet and you're fucked.
 
C

Chuck

Still without luck
Skeletron said:
I'm curious, how can we have photographs of nebulae abd stuff from lightyears away but not up close shots of Pluto? Can't the Hubble just zoom in?
Click to expand...

I'm going to try to look up the explanation I read for this, but basically hubble is able to focus its camera on a point in space that produces far far more light than a tiny planet like pluto can reflect. So more light = sharper image, relative to distance of course.

here's a pretty good one. http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/02141014-hubble-galaxy-pluto.html?
 
S

Skeletron

Member
That makes sense. Thanks. Damn, those things we have photographs of outside our solar system must be fucking huge then. (And bright)
 
The Sum of Zero

The Sum of Zero

Member
Skeletron said:
I'm curious, how can we have photographs of nebulae abd stuff from lightyears away but not up close shots of Pluto? Can't the Hubble just zoom in?
Click to expand...

Trying not to be that guy, but it's been answered over and over in this thread.

I see they got you covered, but next time read through first. There's a lot of interesting info you may have missed :)
 
C

CassSept

Member
Ziffles said:
Why did people think Pluto was blue? I mean we've had this orange/grey/black Hubble image for a while now.

http://i.imgur.com/g2su2kX.jpg[img][/QUOTE]

These photos were released only in 2010, most of us probably base their expectations of Pluto's appearance on textbooks and pictures of Pluto used by the media in 2006 when IAU decided on a definition of the planet. I probably saw it before but I still expected it to be more ice blue rather than orange.
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C

Cimarron

Member
Loved the trailer but Pluto is not a planet... All of the primary planets have been explored since the 80's. Will Ceres get the same amount of respect?
 
S

SpacePirate Ridley

Member
Amazingly interesting, ive always been fascinated with space since I was a small kid.

CassSept said:
These photos were released only in 2010, most of us probably base their expectations of Pluto's appearance on textbooks and pictures of Pluto used by the media in 2006 when IAU decided on a definition of the planet. I probably saw it before but I still expected it to be more ice blue rather than orange.
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Mmmm, I have a 90's book about the solar system which paint pluto grey. Its not the tint of red it seems to have now, but it was definetly not blue. In fact that glass is the first time I see someone depicting pluto blue.
 
C

CassSept

Member
SpacePirate Ridley said:
Mmmm, I have a 90's book about the solar system which paint pluto grey. Its not the tint of red it seems to have now, but it was definetly not blue. In fact that glass is the first time I see someone depicting pluto blue.
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Huh, maybe that depends on the country. Grey/white makes sense since we did not have colored pictures of Pluto until recently, maybe some illustrated it as blue since it was described as a chunk of ice in space. That study above is interesting as painting it with reddish hue probably increased in the recent years which would point to blue being more popular in the past.
 
G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
They are starting to think of names for Pluto's and it's moons geological features:

  • Features on Pluto: The themes include space missions and spacecraft (Columbia and Challenger, Sputnik and Soyuz), scientists and engineers (Tombaugh, Lowell and Oort), historic explorers (Norgay, Hillary and Baré), underworld beings and locales (Cthulhu, Balrog and Pandemonium), and travelers to the underworld (Heracles, Virgil and Beatrice).
  • Features on Charon, Pluto's largest moon: Fictional explorers and travelers (Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Skywalker, Leia, Vader, Alice, Dorothy), fictional origins and destinations (Vulcan, Mordor, Tatooine), fictional vessels (Serenity, Tardis, Nostromo, Galactica), and authors, artists and directors who touched on exploration (Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, Madeleine L'Engle).
  • Features on the moon Styx: River gods (Ethiopia's Eqqo, Egypt's Hapi, Zaire's Mbongo).
  • Features on the moon Nix: Deities of the night (Chandra, a Hindu moon god; Bodach, a Scottish goblin; Metsaka, a moon goddess of Mexico's Huichol people).
  • Features on the moon Kerberos: Dogs from literature, history and mythology (Laika and Toto).
  • Features on the moon Hydra: Legendary serpents and dragons (Jabberwock, Smaug and Falkor).


Edit - Update:

But mission managers have now reported that New Horizons has resumed operations on its main computer and the sequence of commands for the Pluto flyby have been uploaded.
Click to expand...

An investigation into the anomaly on July 4th has confirmed that the main computer was overloaded due to a timing conflict in the spacecraft command sequence. Basically, the computer was trying to receive a large command load at the same time as it was trying to compress previous science data. When presented with the overload, the computer behaved as it was programmed to, entering safe mode and switching to the backup.

Thirty planned observations were lost during the three-day recovery period, but that represents less than a per cent of the total science the New Horizons team is hoping to collect between July 4th and July 16th.
Click to expand...
 
G

G.ZZZ

Member
If it's indeed natural orange it's really itneresting. Mars take his red color from his primitive oxigen atmosphere which then all oxidated the iron and carbon present on the surface. But pluto shouldn't have been able to retain an atmosphere at all with his size.

Found this possible explanation for the color:

The overall color is believed to be a result of ultraviolet radiation from the distant sun breaking up methane present on Pluto's surface, leaving behind a dark and red-carbon-rich residue
Click to expand...

The sun, ever so amazing, even at that distance.
 
W

Walshicus

Member
G.ZZZ said:
If it's indeed natural orange it's really itneresting. Mars take his red color from his primitive oxigen atmosphere which then all oxidated the iron and carbon present on the surface. But pluto shouldn't have been able to retain an atmosphere at all with his size.

Found this possible explanation for the color:



The sun, ever so amazing, even at that distance.
Click to expand...

I don't think I've ever seen planets given male pronouns...
 
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