NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured these views of Pluto and its moons on April 25, 2015. Credit: NASA/JHU-APL/SwRI
Posted on 05/13/2015 8:28:21 PM PDT by BenLurkin
"Detecting these tiny moons from a distance of more than 55 million miles [88.5 million kilometers] is amazing, and a credit to the team that built our LORRI long-range camera and [mission team member] John Spencer’s team of moon and ring hunters," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. [Photos of Pluto and Its Moons]
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
photo at the link can be enlarged but its still hard to spot them all
Should be very interesting when we get there.
Spied by NSA probe...someone make a cellphone call out there?
/yeah I know NASA not NSA, just pissed at big brother
“All 5 of Pluto’s Known Moons Spied by NASA Probe”
Bad enough that they have so many cameras that we cannot even buy a quart of milk without our movements logged - and now Pluto?
Every time I hear about Pluto, I’m reminded about the book titled The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War
Are they still “moons” if it’s not a “planet”?
/snark.
I thought the same when I first saw this series of pictures, but remember that New Horizons is still over 45 million miles from Pluto and the resolution is still fairly low.
Two months from now the spacecraft will make its closest approach to Pluto, and I suspect we’ll know well before that whether or not Pluto is truly more spherical than not.
I’ve been waiting for this encounter for a long time, and I’m thrilled that this is happening while I am still around to see it!
that's 55m miles?
and this is 8400 miles?
sorry... i'm pretty sure they have better optics at that range. i'd like to know what's actually down there
That’s just a warm-up to when the Federal Government spies on Uranus...
Why are they wasting money on this? Aren’t they supposed to be looking into climate change instead?
Nonsense! "Muslim outreach" is the focus of NASA now.
That’s an artifact from the imaging camera. Pluto is only a few pixels across at this range, so the image is aberrated.
MD
Not really — New Horizons carries a limited payload to save mass. LORRI (LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager) is an 8-inch telescope, so the resolution is only going to be so good at 55 million miles. Imagine how well you can image asteroids in your back yard with an 8-inch telescope, because that’s roughly the same distances and sizes involved here.
MD
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