New Horizons: Pluto

[PortalHunter]

Link because the image is too big.

If you haven't seen this already, we have more high-quality pictures of what Pluto and its moons look like.

Yet another link.

Counting down to July the 14th for the flyby...

[Bear]

I keep waiting to see pictures of pluto (and other such distant bodies) that AREN'T blurry.

Just sayin' if we can pick up images of extrasolar planets a dozen light years away, we ought to be able to focus on Pluto at least well enough to see whether or not somebody has built highways.

I kid, I kid. But we really should be able to pick out individual rocks the size of, say, the pyramids at Giza.

[stevebowers]

The 'pyramid' on Ceres is intriguing; that world has some curious features, and even close examination might not explain them. New Horizons will zip past Pluto so fast we will only get a few hi-res photos.

[Drashner1]

We don't actually have any visual images of extrasolar planets AFAIK. What we have are observations of wobbling stars that indicate the presence of a.massive body or bodies orbiting them. So more detection by inference than by direct observation.

[PortalHunter]

We don't actually have any visual images of extrasolar planets AFAIK. What we have are observations of wobbling stars that indicate the presence of a massive body or bodies orbiting them. So more detection by inference than by direct observation.

Direct imaging is possible, but, as you said, it's not really a visual image worth looking at for aesthetic reasons.

Searching up images for directly imaged exoplanets turn up some pretty interesting results.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exoplanets


In the OA verse, though, there's the Golden Tower Builder ruins, imaged all the way from the Andromedia Galaxy. I don't see why not some (very?) lucky telescopic imaging, transapient analysis and a lot of enhancing wouldn't be enough to get some half-decent images.

[Cray]

The posted picture reminds me of a bowling ball handbag...

Pardon the flippancy. I've waited a long time to see Pluto this close and we're finally getting there.

[PortalHunter]

New Horizons Team Responds to Spacecraft Anomaly

Contact was lost for over an hour. We might not have any scientific data for up to a few days.

Pardon the flippancy. I've waited a long time to see Pluto this close and we're finally getting there.

I wonder how many books, TV shows, video games, movies, comics, illustrations, and childhood fantasies will be proven inaccurate with the depiction of Pluto?
Heh, at least people won't think it's blue anymore.

Ten days and counting...

[PortalHunter]

Back on track.

[Cray]

I wonder how many books, TV shows, video games, movies, comics, illustrations, and childhood fantasies will be proven inaccurate with the depiction of Pluto?

Quite a few, but people have also been saying for decades that Pluto probably resembles Triton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_(moon)

At this point of fuzzy images, Pluto looks similar to Triton for certain loose definitions of "similar."

Ten days and counting...

Ten days, then 45 to 90 days of waiting for the download by a ~1200-baud modem.

Boy, this brings back memories of the Voyager flybys. I was just old enough to get excited as encounter after encounter rolled by.

[Rynn]

It's less than that now, just under 7 days till the flyby