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APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 4:06 am
by 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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Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 6:30 am
by Coil_Smoke
A B S O L U T L Y <> A M A Z I N G ! ! !
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 8:23 am
by starsurfer
Pretty cool! Parts of it remind me of Hyperion.
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 8:43 am
by heehaw
Wow!
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 8:58 am
by 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
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 9:16 am
by 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.
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 11:55 am
by rstevenson
Spif wrote: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
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 12:35 pm
by orin stepanek
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 4:17 pm
by 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.
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 6:16 pm
by 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?
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 6:21 pm
by RJN
rstevenson wrote:Spif wrote: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.
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 7:04 pm
by Rosey
That's Canis Major and Lepus rising over Pluto in the opening 30 seconds..
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 7:08 pm
by Rosey
Rosey wrote:That's Canis Major and Lepus rising over Pluto in the opening 30 seconds..
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 9:40 pm
by Coil_Smoke
De58te wrote: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)
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:24 am
by Chris Peterson
De58te wrote: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.
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 9:16 pm
by 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.
Re: APOD: Pluto Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Jul 31)
Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2017 9:54 pm
by neufer
ppml5 wrote:
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.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Spacecraft/Data-Collection.php wrote:
<<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.>>
