Pluto
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- georgesIII0
- Read prev post comments you fool!maquito
- Oh shit, that even bigger. Sorry.maquito
- ^ http://i.giphy.com/l…Hayoth
- incredible.fadein11
- maquito7
- Hi-res
http://www.nasa.gov/…maquito - Magnificent.Continuity
- sweetmonospaced
- Even more Hi-res: http://www.nasa.gov/…Weyland
- Even more higher res -
http://i.imgur.com/x…set - SSSSsssswwwwoooooaaa...citizen_h
- Highest res -
https://i.ytimg.com/…elahon - Your comment broke my internetmaquito
- Beautiful!formed
- Poor little unplanet.CyBrainX
- awesome pic.fadein11
- Hi-res
- detritus1
- cor blimey!Fax_Benson
- holly shit!!!georgesIII
- nicemaquito
- what wrong with pluto? should be a planet.hotroddy
- Pluto is simply not a large enough round thing in the faces of astronomers for them to get sprung enough to call it a planet any more.ETM
- Found the cat.nbq
- still a planet. pluto forever.sea_sea
- or it's on a different orbit axis entirely, and smaller than other dwarf planets that orbit the sun and have never been considered planets ever?Cosmodrome
- the fact that it's not considered a true planet should actually make it more fascinating, but for some reason, seems to detract.Cosmodrome
- Teach the controversysarahfailin
- motherfucker jonesset
- It's right knobblyset
- nice 3D work!CygnusZero4
- 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.
- sarahfailin-1
I'll weigh in with some science and k-nowledge. For all you complainers about black and white photography-- there is no color in the visible spectrum in deep space!! The sun appears as just a particularly bright star in the great distance. We're talking about extremely, extremely low light.
The reason why the pictures appear to have any color at all is because the satellite takes three different pictures at different wavelengths, and then the 3 images are combined.
If you were looking at pluto with your naked eyes from the same distance it would appear gray.
- <nerdpinkfloyd
- <nasal voicepinkfloyd
- There certainly IS color in the visible spectrum in deep space, and your naked eye would have no problem perceiving it. The amount of light WOULD be an issue.monospaced
- And the reason ANY pictures have color is because of the 3 combined wavelengths, RGB. Same with the retina in your eyes.monospaced
- Of course there is color in space. But no, not like that painted in our favorite sci-fi shows.ETM
- it's clear i meant that there is not enough light for the human eye to perceive color in deep space. gimme a break heresarahfailin
- that wasn't 100% clear, based on your second sentence :)monospaced
- erm, no, that's not how it works, sarah.detritus
- Well, I suppose - if you did view pluto with your bare eyes from the distance of NH, you'd see about a quarter second of colour, then your eyeballs would freezedetritus
- Yea but potatoset
- OP310
- ETM4
That's no small planet. It's a space station!
- 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
- PonyBoy4
^^what ETM said... and it's not just Pluto that New Horizons has gathered data on the last ten years... look up all the info on Jupiter and the Jovian system we now have due to this craft.
*is very proud of this achievement... yay humanity! :)
- ETM4
Before one more person bitches about b&w photos, actually educate yourself on the process. Anyone who's manipulated photos in PhotoShop should be able to grasp the concept:
- uan0
- detritus0
Here, take this Cygnus - this is what your tax dollars have been hard at work at...
- docpoz1
holy shit its fucking pluto!!! we did it!!!