Pluto
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- ApeRobot1
- fuck yeah!monospaced
- $700 m for this?pablo28
- These are artist renders. I saw everyone geeking out over them on tumblr, haha.
Not real.set - awe... pretty convincing thoughmonospaced
- Wish they wereset
- I got a semi first time I sae themset
- hahaha! hey, we'll have real high-res images soonmonospaced
- i wonder when google pluto is gonna happen. they did one for mars and the moon as i recallscarabin
- Where is the photoshop tutorial for this?desmo
- fire up Bryce 7 Pro!uan
- if anything interesting or out the ordinary was found like they would let you know.yurimon
- pinkfloyd2
Pluto is my favorite planet.
- http://7770647a14b08…marychain
- your favorite "dwarf planet" you mean.ETM
- PonyBoy3
"New Horizons passed Jupiter on Feb. 28, 2007, riding the planet’s gravity to boost its speed and shave three years off its trip to Pluto. It was the eighth spacecraft to visit Jupiter – but a combination of trajectory, timing and technology allowed it to explore details no probe had seen before, such as lightning near the planet’s poles, the life cycle of fresh ammonia clouds, boulder-size clumps speeding through the planet’s faint rings, the structure inside volcanic eruptions on its moon Io, and the path of charged particles traversing the previously unexplored length of the planet’s long magnetic tail."
- Wow! What a pointless waste of money visiting dead rocks </sarcasm>ETM
- uan0
- maquito-2
- there will be a lot of high res photos, I believemonospaced
- I bought my first 3mp digital camera in 2000... Just saying.maquito
- Bitrate and ping delay means it'll be another 6½ years before they download all the data. Going to cost a fortune and totally wipe out NASA's monthly minutes.detritus
- Seriously people. Do you fucking know the AT&T roaming rates from Pluto!!ETM
- More serious, do some research and understand when and how the images are received, processed and released.ETM
- To channel Loius C.K.s everything is amazing bit, these photos travel 3 billion miles in 4 hours and you're upset the first ones are smaller and b&w?ETM
- detritus-2
- so its a dead, cold rock. how much did this program cost again?CygnusZero4
- Why's it only you vs. the rest of the interworld who seems to have a problem with this? Sure, the graphics are better on your XBone. Perhaps stick to that?detritus
- if it's motion blur they might be able to render it away in postuan
- New Horizons isn't only about Pluto.monospaced
- Im talking about the mission in general. Its a deal rock. We've always known that. What is this money being spent on?CygnusZero4
- We spent how much money for some black and white pictures of pluto???CygnusZero4
- $700000000pablo28
- Go look at the mission site and see the full scope. I'm not going to argue with someone completely blind to the wonder and pride most of us feel in this.detritus
- This admittedly quite costly mission cost 3.5x the revenue earned by the Kim Kardashian app. *shrug*detritus
- FUCK YEAH, AMERICA!
*waves confed... stars and stripes*detritus - This mission is not only about Pluto. How do you not understand this? It's about the extent and activity at the edge of our solar system, and beyond.monospaced
- Also, we're going to have full color, high res images and a SHIT FUCKING TON of data about all the details of the region. Good stuff, not just images.monospaced
- Thing is, it'll take a couple years for all that data to make it here at the rate and distance it's traveling.monospaced
- Colour needs to be processed on earth. The photos are b&w and the colour is data to be compiled later. More efficient to send. over the 2400 baud space modem.ETM
- Akagiyama0
- BOOM!!!!Ramanisky2
- Hopefully Disney will throw its hat in the space exploration ring. This is important stuff.Cosmodrome
- feel4
good video to understand those B&W images
- I refuse to watch this.CygnusZero4
- Live in ignorance then.marychain
- ETM4
That's no small planet. It's a space station!
- docpoz2
9.5 years in the making.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2…
Since its discovery 85 years ago, Pluto has been nothing more than a tiny dot of light. Thanks to NASA’s New Horizons mission, this is no longer the case. After a 9.5 year, 3.5 billion mile journey, a spacecraft the size of a baby grand piano has revolutionized our understanding of the icy world. The first close-up images of the Pluto system are proving to be every bit as exciting as the science team had hoped. Principal investigator Alan Stern said in a media briefing today, “The Solar System definitely saved the best for last.”
With the data beamed down so far, everything we can now see of Pluto and its five moons is changing the way planetary scientists view these distant, icy worlds. Not only does Pluto harbor 11,000-foot mountains composed of frozen water ice, but its surface and the surface of its largest moon, Charon, are surprisingly devoid of large impact craters. This indicates to scientists that both bodies could be geologically active.
The mountains—thought to be no more than 100 million years old—are very young compared to the age of the Solar System, and their average height rivals that of the Rocky Mountains found here on Earth. It’s too early to determine how they formed, but their presence was a surprise to scientists. “This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the Solar System,” said Jeff Moore of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics, and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.
Mountains can be formed in many ways, and the team cannot definitively say how these came to be. But they can rule out tidal heating. There are no other large bodies near Pluto other than its largest moon, Charon, and since it is tidally locked with Charon, there is not a large heat exchange system between the two bodies. There must therefore be some other geologic process taking place.
Whatever provides the power, it could reshape the surface through possibilities that include geysers and or cryovolcanoes. Neither of these processes has been observed yet, but the team will be looking for evidence of them.
The latest data, released today, shows a zoomed-in view of a vast, smooth plain north of the mountains in an area unofficially dubbed “Tombaugh Regio” in honor of the man who discovered Pluto—Clyde Tombaugh. Moore went on to say, “This terrain is not easy to explain; however, the discovery of vast crater-less, very young plains on Pluto exceeds all pre-fly expectations.” The icy plains of Pluto seen in the image—unofficially named Sputnik Planum after the first satellite launched in space—resemble frozen mud cracks like we see here on Earth. This could be evidence for contraction of surface materials, like when mud dries and cracks, or even signs of convection below the surface. More data will be needed to tell.
The region is broken into irregular “polygons,” approximately 20 kilometers across; these are bordered by shallow troughs. Some of the troughs are filled with a dark surface material, while some harbor groups of hills. The hills could have been pushed up via interior processes, or they could be erosion-resistant features.
- Weyland1
This is What We've Learned About Pluto in the Past 24 Hours
- fiver0
Shit is so inspiring. Makes me feel like a turd.
- docpoz1
holy shit its fucking pluto!!! we did it!!!