Posted on 07/18/2015 2:44:26 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: It took 9.5 years to get this close, but you can now take a virtual flight over Pluto in this animation of image data from the New Horizons spacecraft. The Plutonian terrain unfolding 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers) below is identified as Norgay Montes, followed by Sputnik Planum. The icy mountains, informally named for one of the first two Mount Everest climbers Tenzing Norgay, reach up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface. The frozen, young, craterless plains are informally named for the Earth's first artificial satellite. Sputnik Planum is north of Norgay Montes, within Pluto's expansive, bright, heart-shaped feature provisionally known as Tombaugh Regio for Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Video Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research Inst.]
is that a real image or a radar image
almost looks like its made of lead
It’s really dark there, the color is fiddled with.
The shadows from the mountains are cool
OK. Pluto. Been there done that now.
What’s next?
I’ve enjoyed looking at these photos of Pluto from 3 billion miles away. Just for fun last night, I found some information on the old Lunar Orbiter probes that mapped the moon from 1966 to 1967 in preparation of the Apollo landings. You should take a look at the technology they had to use to transmit the photos of the lunar surface. By our standards, primitive. The probe took film photos, processed and developed the images, and then had to convert them into digital images to transmit to earth. Primitive, but also ingenious.
What is also breathtaking (to me) is the horizon on the first of the two flyovers, the Norgay Montes. Look at the stars and rich, beautiful view of the space beyond.
“OK. Pluto. Been there done that now.
What’s next?”
We have Pioneer 10, Voyager 1 and 2, and now New Horizons - after it finishes anything Pluto system, next year, all on thier individual trajectories outbound, through the ‘bubble’ at the end of the Sun’s influence of our solar system, into pure interstellar space, and all are still operating, sensing, and sending info back.
We still have a probe getting to Ceres, to explore and analyze as New horizons is doing now.
We are in the process of putting together the Orion manned spacecraft, with Mars as the destination, hopefully, in time for me to witness the launch before ‘the game is called’.
The Mars vehicles are still operating, and sending back findings.
Ad Astra!!
Groovy!
Woah! Dude!
I see that NASA tried to edit out that big orange blob in the upper right. Pigs in Space!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reBzU8E_Ajk
This probe has been a big success — and it’s the first new encounter we’ve had in years. Those 1970s-80s flybys of the gas giants came one after the other continually for years, and the findings were amazing. Considering the small size of Pluto and its moons, I think these more than hold their own.
The digitizing of photos for sending over wire — basically, fax — has been around since at least WWII. The famous Iwo Jima flag-raising shot got to the US for distribution via fax.
Very.
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