Where New Horizons is

[bystander]

NASA Hosts Briefings on Historic Mission to Pluto
NASA | JHU-APL | New Horizons | 2015 Apr 09

NASA Television will air media briefings at 1 p.m. EDT and 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 14, to discuss plans and related upcoming activities about the agency’s historic New Horizons spacecraft flyby of Pluto this summer.

The two briefing event, which is open to the public, will take place in the Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street SW in Washington.

Briefers will describe the mission’s goals, scientific objectives and encounter plans, including the types of images and other data that can be expected and when.

New Horizons will fly past Pluto on July 14. The spacecraft already has covered more than 3 billion miles since it launched on January 19, 2006. It will pass Pluto at a speed of 31,000 mph taking thousands of images and making a wide range of other science observations. Given the distance between Pluto and Earth, data from the spacecraft during the encounter will take approximately 4.5 hours to reach our planet. ...

[geckzilla]

Here you go, Pluto-lovers. The best thing to come out of that briefing Bystander linked to in the post previous to this one.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Scie ... age_id=175
Picture of Pluto!

[luxorion]

Hi all,

Here is one of my last drawing related to Pluto and New Horizons mission

I will try to prepare some others.

Cheers,
Thierry
LUXORION
http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/alien ... erings.htm

[Beyond]

You draw good!!

[orin stepanek]

You draw good!!

+1

[luxorion]

A general view of Pluto, Charon and New Horizons


Cheers,
Thierry
LUXORION
http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/alien ... erings.htm

[neufer]

A general view of Pluto, Charon and New Horizons

Do you realize that Charon is over
half the (linear) size of Pluto?

Pluto radius = 1170 km
Charon radius = 603 km

[luxorion]

And a last renderings

[luxorion]

A general view of Pluto, Charon and New Horizons
...

Do you realize that Charon is over
half the (linear) size of Pluto?
Pluto radius = 1170 km
Charon radius = 603 km

Yes, but the apparent size depends on many factors, the first being the distance at which are both bodies from the camera.
But if you insist I can make Charon larger

[neufer]

[b][size=200]Charon grayi, the giant whip-spider,[/size] found in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Palau. This whip-spider usually lives in caves.[/b]

---

Do you realize that Charon is over
half the (linear) size of Pluto?

• Pluto radius = 1170 km
  Charon radius = 603 km

Yes, but the apparent size depends on many factors, the first being the distance at which are both bodies from the camera.

But if you insist I can make Charon larger

Thanks!

[THX1138]

The most recent pictures seem to hint colors real close to the that which you have used ( BTW, awesome artwork )
and i really hope to see a colorful Pluto upon arrival, that is to say i won't be disappointed by pictures of a frozen Ice ball, I'd just rather pluto have a colorful rocky surface, flowing rivers of methane, mountain peaks of white or clear frozen methane. Lakes of ammonia, thermal hot spots under some of the lakes where the ammonia is boiling....OK I'll stop, a guy can dream can't he

[neufer]

<<The most recent pictures seem to hint colors real close to the that which you have used ( BTW, awesome artwork )
and i really hope to see a colorful Pluto upon arrival, that is to say i won't be disappointed by pictures of a frozen Ice ball, I'd just rather pluto have a colorful rocky surface, flowing rivers of methane, mountain peaks of white or clear frozen methane.>>

[img3="Global Color Mosaic of Triton, taken by Voyager 2 in 1989
The bright, slightly pinkish, south polar cap at bottom is composed of nitrogen and methane ice and is streaked by dust deposits left by nitrogen gas geysers. The mostly darker region above it includes Triton's "cantaloupe terrain" and cryovolcanic and tectonic features. Near the lower right limb are several dark maculae ("strange spots")."]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... rge%29.jpg[/img3]

• Possibly a little more pinkish as with Triton? =>

<<Spectroscopic analysis of Pluto's surface reveals it to be composed of more than 98 percent nitrogen ice, with traces of methane and carbon monoxide. The face of Pluto oriented toward Charon contains more methane ice, whereas the opposite face contains more nitrogen and carbon monoxide ice.

Pluto is one of the most contrastive bodies in the Solar System, with as much contrast as Saturn's moon Iapetus. The color varies between charcoal black, dark orange and white: Buie et al. term it "significantly less red than Mars and much more similar to the hues seen on Io with a slightly more orange cast".>>

[BMAONE23]

For the first time, images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft are revealing bright and dark regions on the surface of faraway Pluto – the primary target of the New Horizons close flyby in mid-July.

The images were captured in early to mid-April from within 70 million miles (113 million kilometers), using the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera on New Horizons. A technique called image deconvolution sharpens the raw, unprocessed images beamed back to Earth. New Horizons scientists interpreted the data to reveal the dwarf planet has broad surface markings – some bright, some dark – including a bright area at one pole that may be a polar cap.

Pluto surface features becoming distinguishable

Click to view full size image

[geckzilla]

Saw this earlier today. The surface brightness variation almost makes Pluto look lumpy instead of round. Actually, it really makes it look lumpy but I'm supposing that's an illusion.

[BMAONE23]

And one lump in particular seems to always be pointing away from Charon

[Chris Peterson]

And one lump in particular seems to always be pointing away from Charon

This binary planet system is tidally locked- Pluto to Charon, Charon to Pluto. So what we see here is to be expected.

[orin stepanek]

It won't be too long now! I can hardly wait for the closeups!

[neufer]

http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2015/04/ ... ns-photos/

[BMAONE23]

And one lump in particular seems to always be pointing away from Charon

This binary planet system is tidally locked- Pluto to Charon, Charon to Pluto. So what we see here is to be expected.

There also appears to be another, not quite so bright spot, directly beneath Charon. The physical location of the spots strongly resembles Tidal Bulging and Inertial Tidal Bulging as seen in this simulation
http://astro.unl.edu/classaction/animat ... desim.html

And a few other interesting Simulations
http://astro.unl.edu/animationsLinks.html

[Chris Peterson]

There also appears to be another, not quite so bright spot, directly beneath Charon. The physical location of the spots strongly resembles Tidal Bulging and Inertial Tidal Bulging...

Both of these bodies are large enough to be substantially spherical. Any deviation from that isn't going to be remotely apparent at the resolution of this image. Bright spots spill over into adjacent pixels. When an image only consists of a few pixels, that translates to significant geometric distortion (consider how a couple of tiny bright spots on Ceres bloomed into a huge white patch in low resolution images).

[THX1138]

A general view of Pluto, Charon and New Horizons
...

Do you realize that Charon is over
half the (linear) size of Pluto?
Pluto radius = 1170 km
Charon radius = 603 km

Theoretically speaking
With Charon's radius being only 603 km could a person standing on it escape it's gravitation pull by jumping up
That would have to be an E ticket ride were one able to jump off one and land on the other
Just wondering

[Chris Peterson]

Theoretically speaking
With Charon's radius being only 603 km could a person standing on it escape it's gravitation pull by jumping up
That would have to be an E ticket ride were one able to jump off one and land on the other
Just wondering

Only if you could jump at about 600 m/s, or around 1300 mph. (Actually, you wouldn't need to jump at the full escape velocity to be captured by Pluto, but it would still be a leap far beyond human capacity.)

[THX1138]

Thank you Chris
So my next question
What size of asteroid or comet would this be possible / say it's the consistency of ice.

BTW Chris, any idea at all / educated guess for why we're not being afforded clear close-up images from dawn? I cannot find any information on the subject anywhere, that is except for wild crackpot suggestions of a conspiracy by NASA to hide (what is obviously a Alien complex or city ) lol.
Nonetheless the situation with these blurry pictures ( the only ones that I've seen to date ) is most peculiar

[BMAONE23]

The first orbital images of Ceres were from an altitude of 13500 km or 8400 minutes. Dawn is just now entering the day side of Ceres in an orbit that takes days rather than hours. The orbit is a gradual spiral down to survey altitude of 4400 km or 2730 mi. At this altitude, Dawn will still take 37.5 hours to cross the day side of the asteroid or 75 hours for one complete orbit. Even at that distance, Dawn will not be affected by the shadow of Ceres.

[orin stepanek]

everyday it's getting closer!

http://www.boulder.swri.edu/ppod/