Posted on 09/17/2015 5:26:37 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured a near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto's horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto's tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 230 miles (380 kilometers) across.
Wow. Just wow.
They tried to tell those plutonions no SUVs, but they wouldn’t listen.
It’s Johns Hopkins not John Hopkins. Just saying.
Pluto has MASS. It’s a friggin’ PLANET!
Those gaseous void, ‘Planets’ *SMIRK* are the ones that need to go!!
But seriously, this is the most AWESOME Solar System I’ve ever lived in; I say we keep them all, anyways. :)
The Solar System Song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUZ2tfr1bsU
Oops.
What a life we have experienced! My mom turns 95 next Sunday. I arrived in ‘51. No AC, no space travel. No fast food. No TV. A party line phone for the “wealthy”, X-ray images of your feet at the Buster Brown Shoe Store. All that aside, happiness still only occurs between the ears.
That’s awesome. Thanks.
Kind of looks like a Michigan driveway in January.
For some reason, when I see a picture like this, I kind of regret that I didn’t have a chance to see it when I was about twelve years old, when I use to look up in the sky and night at wonder what it was like. It would have been almost magical.
#LittlePlanetsMatter
LOL!
That is the first photo of Pluto I’ve seen that lived up to its hype.
I hear ‘ya. Saving the best for last, I guess. These pics are going to continue trickling in for the next nine months or so. So I’m definitely expecting to be saying, “WOW,” a lot during that time.
Awesome photo.
I can understand the names Norgay Montes and Hillary Montes, but Sputnik Planum? It’s our probe.
Looks like a Planet to me.
My Grandparents were all born in the 1800s. They died from the 50s to the 70s. They saw the transformation from ox cart travel to supersonic jets. Their parents lived through or fought in the Civil War.
Electricity, radio, TV, men on the moon and on and on.
There has never been such a change in technology, ever.
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