APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)

[APOD Robot]

Pluto Flyover from New Horizons

Explanation: What if you could fly over Pluto -- what might you see? The New Horizons spacecraft did just this in 2015 July as it shot past the distant world at a speed of about 80,000 kilometers per hour. Recently, many images from this spectacular passage have been color enhanced, vertically scaled, and digitally combined into the featured two-minute time-lapse video. As your journey begins, light dawns on mountains thought to be composed of water ice but colored by frozen nitrogen. Soon, to your right, you see a flat sea of mostly solid nitrogen that has segmented into strange polygons that are thought to have bubbled up from a comparatively warm interior. Craters and ice mountains are common sights below. The video dims and ends over terrain dubbed bladed because it shows 500-meter high ridges separated by kilometer-sized gaps. Although the robotic New Horizons spacecraft has too much momentum ever to return to Pluto, it has now been targeted at Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU 69, which it should shoot past on New Year's Day 2019.

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[Coil_Smoke]

A B S O L U T L Y <> A M A Z I N G ! ! !

[starsurfer]

Pretty cool! Parts of it remind me of Hyperion.

[heehaw]

Wow!

[JohnD]

The EPOD (Earth Science Picture of the Day) today July 31 2107, is an Earth scene that is similar to some of those Plutonian surfaces. Apparant craters - they're not - and segmented terrain, probably rom diffferent processes, but anyway. A pleasing parallel. http://epod.usra.edu/

John

[Spif]

Are the features exaggerated? Caption says the colors are enhanced, but what about the vertical relief?

The mountains look much higher than they ought to given the scale. Craters look too deep.

[rstevenson]

Are the features exaggerated? Caption says the colors are enhanced, but what about the vertical relief?

The mountains look much higher than they ought to given the scale. Craters look too deep.

I was wondering that myself, and found this on the "featured two-minute time-lapse video" page ...

The topographic relief is exaggerated by a factor of two to three times in these movies to emphasize topography; the surface colors of Pluto ... also have been enhanced to bring out detail.

Rob

[orin stepanek]

Beautiful little world! Go Pluto!

[Jim Armstrong]

Spectacular!
And, at 700 million dollars from start to finish, money well spent.
Last week the US launched the aircraft carrier USS Ford at a cost of 12-13 Billion dollars. This for a vessel whose mission may be outdated and has multiple untested and perhaps unworkable systems.
NASA One, Navy Zero.

[De58te]

Something puzzles me. With a speed of 1333.3 kilometers a minute, and a Pluto diameter of about 2,400 kilometers, then New Horizons whizzed past Puto's diameter in just under 2 minutes. Why is the video a time lapse, because 2 minutes is the real time? Also, why does the journey begin in the predawn? You'd think that New Horizons beginning its journey from the inner solar system, sun side, that it would arrive at Pluto during mid Pluto day, or high noon? Then it would take 2 minutes to shoot off into the twilight evening sky. It didn't fly sideways and duck around Neptune, thus arriving from the side, relative to the Sun?

[RJN]

Are the features exaggerated? Caption says the colors are enhanced, but what about the vertical relief?

The mountains look much higher than they ought to given the scale. Craters look too deep.

I was wondering that myself, and found this on the "featured two-minute time-lapse video" page ...

The topographic relief is exaggerated by a factor of two to three times in these movies to emphasize topography; the surface colors of Pluto ... also have been enhanced to bring out detail.

Rob

Thanks! Yes, surface features were digitized and vertically scaled. The words "vertically scaled" have now been added to the main NASA APOD's text.

[Rosey]

That's Canis Major and Lepus rising over Pluto in the opening 30 seconds..

[Rosey]

That's Canis Major and Lepus rising over Pluto in the opening 30 seconds..

[Coil_Smoke]

Something puzzles me. With a speed of 1333.3 kilometers a minute, and a Pluto diameter of about 2,400 kilometers, then New Horizons whizzed past Puto's diameter in just under 2 minutes. Why is the video a time lapse, because 2 minutes is the real time? Also, why does the journey begin in the predawn? You'd think that New Horizons beginning its journey from the inner solar system, sun side, that it would arrive at Pluto during mid Pluto day, or high noon? Then it would take 2 minutes to shoot off into the twilight evening sky. It didn't fly sideways and duck around Neptune, thus arriving from the side, relative to the Sun?

I don't think we can imply a linear time line to this recreation of the flyby. It could be rear looking for all I know. Or a mash up of approach and departure data. I imagine much zooming and cropping was used to create such an intimate rendezvous. All I can add to the discussion is and to agree with the the above post ...We Got Our Money's Worth On This One And What A Time To Be Alive !
P.S. Already + Bonus Kuiper Encounter(s)

[Chris Peterson]

Something puzzles me. With a speed of 1333.3 kilometers a minute, and a Pluto diameter of about 2,400 kilometers, then New Horizons whizzed past Puto's diameter in just under 2 minutes. Why is the video a time lapse, because 2 minutes is the real time? Also, why does the journey begin in the predawn? You'd think that New Horizons beginning its journey from the inner solar system, sun side, that it would arrive at Pluto during mid Pluto day, or high noon? Then it would take 2 minutes to shoot off into the twilight evening sky. It didn't fly sideways and duck around Neptune, thus arriving from the side, relative to the Sun?

I don't think this is meant to recreate the New Horizons trajectory. They just chose a path that captured a wide range of landscapes.

[ppml5]

Ever since man first landed on the moon, NASA has been the leader in high adventure and the most advanced science. In the Pluto fly-by it is amazing how they even managed to retrieve the radio signals from such a vast distance.

[neufer]

Ever since man first landed on the moon, NASA has been the leader in high adventure and the most advanced science. In the Pluto fly-by it is amazing how they even managed to retrieve the radio signals from such a vast distance.

<<A major challenge for the New Horizons mission is the relatively low "downlink" rate at which data can be transmitted to Earth, especially when you compare it to rates now common for high-speed Internet surfers. During the Jupiter flyby in February 2007, New Horizons sent data home at about 38 kilobits per second (kbps), which is slightly slower than the transmission speed for most computer modems. The average downlink rate after New Horizons passes Pluto (and sends the bulk of its encounter data back to Earth) is approximately 2,000 bits per second, a rate the spacecraft achieves by downlinking with both of its transmitters through NASA's largest antennas. Even then, it will take until late 2016 to bring down all the encounter data stored on the spacecraft's recorders.>>