NASA’s New Horizons Sees More Detail as It Draws Closer to Pluto

NASA ^ | May 27,2015 | Staff

[lbryce]

What a difference 20 million miles makes! Images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft are growing in scale as the spacecraft approaches its mysterious target. The new images, taken May 8-12 using a powerful telescopic camera and downlinked last week, reveal more detail about Pluto’s complex and high contrast surface.

These images show Pluto in the latest series of New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) photos, taken May 8-12, 2015, compared to LORRI images taken one month earlier. In the month between these image sets, New Horizons’ distance to Pluto decreased from 68 million miles (110 million kilometers) to 47 million miles (75 million kilometers), as the spacecraft speeds toward a close encounter with the Pluto system in mid-July. The April images are shown on the left, with the May images on the right. All have been rotated to align Pluto’s rotational axis with the vertical direction (up-down), as depicted schematically in the center panel. Between April and May, Pluto appears to get larger as the spacecraft gets closer, with Pluto’s apparent size increasing by approximately 50 percent. Pluto rotates around its axis every 6.4 Earth days, and these images show the variations in Pluto’s surface features during its rotation. These images are displayed at four times the native LORRI image size, and have been processed using a method called deconvolution, which sharpens the original images to enhance features on Pluto. Deconvolution can occasionally add “false” details, so the finest details in these pictures will need to be confirmed by images taken from closer range in the next few weeks. All of the images are displayed using the same linear brightness scale.

The images were taken from just under 50 million miles (77 million kilometers) away,

[Vermont Lt]

It helps develop technology; it gives us information on how the universe works so we can adapt our environment, and exploring is in our nature. How about we drop a bomber or two and spend the money on something that could make our lives better, instead of just protecting a few rich guys’ interests.

[mabarker1]

In Math and Arithmetic, Dwarf Planet Pluto

How do you work out how long radio waves take to get from Earth to Pluto?

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Edit

Answer by Don Dfoofnik

Confidence votes 165K

There are three kinds of answers: ones that are mostly right, ones that are mostly wrong, and those that once were right but now are wrong.

Radio waves travel at essentially the speed of light in space, and that is a known value. So if you know the exact distance between Earth and Pluto, you can divide the distance by the speed to see how long a radio signal from Earth will take to reach there. Of course, during the year the time will vary, because the distance will vary.

Average distance of Pluto from the Sun: 5.874 billion kilometers
Average distance of Earth from the Sun: 149.6 million kilometers
Distance from Earth to Pluto ~ 5.724 billion kilometers

Speed of radio signal (light): 299792.456 kilometers per second

Dividing: 5.724 x 109 / 2.998 x 105 = 1.91 x 104 seconds = 5.3 hours
(and of course, to send it and receive a reply would take twice that time)

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Absolute closest distance (4.285 billion km) -- 4.0 hours
Absolute farthest distance (7.463 billion km) -- 6.9 hours

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Then You add in the time it takes NASA Engineers to make coffee and wait until the CIANSAMILITARYINTEL have gone through and Redacted all the stuff they don't want the Public to see and ship the Images via Pack Camel in the name of mooselimb diversity to NASA and there You have the answer.

[Covenantor]

Thanks for the post.

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Have to wonder about the overall intelligence of the PR writer that produced this:

All have been rotated to align Pluto’s rotational axis with the vertical direction (up-down).

damn those cursive drafts!

[seawolf101]

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks lbryce, extra to APoD.

[Squawk 8888]

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Is the probe also there to break the bad news of the planet’s demotion to the Plutoniuns?