New high-res images of Pluto from New Horizons

[Jeff7]

Some new photos are available.











Link to the entire mosaic.




10,000 miles from a target a bit under 1,500 miles in diameter, moving well above 30,000 miles per hour, lit by a tiny, distant Sun. Impressive.




.

 

[OutHouse]

That's very cool

 

[JTsyo]

lit by a tiny, distant Sun.

That's a good point. I'm guessing they need long exposures to capture enough light out there.

 

[Jeff7]

That's a good point. I'm guessing they need long exposures to capture enough light out there.

Longish, combined with sensitive imagers.
Each photo in the mosaic had a 3-second exposure time. I guess it's kind of long. Some of these spacecraft will use multi-minute exposure times, depending on what they're looking for.

New Horizons was passing by so quickly that it didn't have time for a lot of really long exposures. It also needed time to use its other instruments during the short time it had during the closest encounter.

 

[eldorado99]

Definitely cool pics. Hard to have a sense of scale.

 

[crashtech]

nm

 

[umbrella39]

Beautiful. Thanks for posting. My son and I waited for years for the fly by and the photos that have come out recently were well worth the wait.

 

[TheVrolok]

Really awesome mosaic.

 

[Captante]

Cool

 

[11thHour]

If there's no McDonalds, it's not a planet.

 

[Jeff7]

Beautiful. Thanks for posting. My son and I waited for years for the fly by and the photos that have come out recently were well worth the wait.

It's just got to be painful. All the photos and data are there on a solid state drive 3 billion miles away, being trickled through a coffee stirrer.
None of the luxury of a Mars rover and the MRO's multi-megabit downlink speed.



Geez, I remember watching the launch video back in college.


(Or for that matter, thinking about how long it would be until Cassini was launched, or how long it would take to arrive at Saturn. It's been there more than 10 years now.
<chases kids off my damn lawn>)
:\
Checking on its Wiki page, it looks like it's been scheduled for a destructive decommissioning on September 17, 2017 to ensure absolutely no risk of future microbial contamination of Enceladus, which likely harbors liquid water beneath the surface. I guess its supply of propellant will be mostly gone by then, just enough for a final deorbiting maneuver.
They say it's also prevent Titan from being contaminated, but they already sent a lander there, so.....wat????
Maybe the lander was more thoroughly sterilized? Still, killing everything and keeping it that way until the thing's in space is tricky.

 

[Newbian]

If there's no McDonalds, it's not a planet.