New Horizons

[tater]

I posted 2 pics one page up. They only get a couple pics an hour, right?

[winged]

tater we get only 2 pictures so far (+ Hydra)

[RocketPilot573]

I posted 2 pics one page up. They only get a couple pics an hour, right?

With a downlink speed of 1-2 kb/s, they do indeed get pics very slowly.

[monstah]

https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html shows the downlink to be offline for some time already. Some planned downtime, maybe? I expected it to download pictures for a long time.

[Ralathon]

They probably had to send a "Give me data X" command to NH. So they're waiting 8 hours for the "Okay, here's data X! *Bleeaargh*" roundsignal.

[Superfluous J]

I'm happy to admit this thread is my only source of New Horizon news.

No impact craters in the first frame.

Makes sense. Every "year" most of the surface is remade, as the "ice" melts and refreezes.

What if it means that Pluto has cleared its orbit?

No.

[Frida Space]

FRIDAY?? OH COME ON 2 days wait?

[benjee10]

What an interesting place the Pluto system is turning out to be. Good job, New Horizons. Good job indeed.

[Aethon]

FRIDAY?? OH COME ON 2 days wait?

Must be something before then, though I just heard him say it.

I'm speechless. This changes the way we view icy objects. Water ice bedrock mountains comparative to the Rockies?? Great images. Craterless surfaces?!? A giant water ice cube as a moon?! Resurfacing without tidalism?!?

The Heart rename ( Tombaugh Regio ) was a nice touch. Young Tombaugh was quite emotional, as well as myself. and Cthulhu Regio,. Super cool.

Can anyone link me to a lagless youtube review??

I'll be back later with more coherency.

Edited July 18, 2015 by Aethon

[winged]

Hey is it true that we can expect 70 meters/pixel photos in next two month?

I've heard about it somewhere in polish version of reddit.

[LittleBlueGaming]

They said Pluto is unlike any other planet or moon, can't really draw analogs to it, the whole thing is just better than they hoped for.

[regex]

Pluto and Charon are going to be some of the best places to visit in RSS ... in about 16 months.

[Robotengineer]

Doesn't the thing in the green outline look like Sauron?

[Frida Space]

Sorry if these have already been published, please tell me and i'll remove them!

[LittleBlueGaming]

Doesn't the thing in the green outline look like Sauron?

http://i.imgur.com/0iT6IBu.png

What's he doing so far from Mordor?

*GASP* Pluto is Middle-Earth, Sauron's invading!

[Shpaget]

What do the numbers under the dish icons on the DSN now site mean?

[Ignath]

What do the numbers under the dish icons on the DSN now site mean?

I think they are identifying numbers for the dish itself. If you click on one of them, then look at the data about the connection/dish...the "Name" of the dish is always "DSS ##" (so for example, the DSS 54 in Madrid is currently targeting New Horizons).

[klesh]

Those are some cool looking mountains, man.

[Laie]

Emily Lakdawalla has been blogging about the transmission plan some time ago:

Following closest approach, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 15 and 16, there will be a series of "First Look" downlinks containing a sampling of key science data. Another batch of data will arrive in the "Early High Priority" downlinks over the subsequent weekend, July 17-20. Then there will be a hiatus of 8 weeks before New Horizons turns to systematically downlinking all its data. Almost all image data returned during the week around closest approach will be lossily compressed -- they will show JPEG compression artifacts. Only the optical navigation images are losslessly compressed.

The transmission of the High Priority data set will be complete on July 20, and then image transmission will pause. For nearly two months, until September 14, New Horizons will switch to near-real-time downlinking of data from instruments that generate low data volumes (like SWAP and PEPSSI) while it transmits just housekeeping information for all of the rest of the data. No new images will arrive on the ground during this time.

On September 14, New Horizons will begin downlinking a "browse" version of the entire Pluto data set, in which all images will be lossily compressed. It will take about 10 weeks to get that data set to the ground. There will be compression artifacts, but we'll see the entire data set. Then, around November 16, New Horizons will begin to downlink the entire science data set losslessly compressed. It will take a year to complete that process.

Source (incl. some outline of what pictures to expect over the next few days)

[RocketPilot573]

I rotated the Pluto image 90 degrees so I don't have to tilt my head.

[PB666]

I rotated the Pluto image 90 degrees so I don't have to tilt my head.

Here's the video. Spoiler alert, apparently mountains can clap.

Jokes aside, lead researchers estimate the flat surface of Pluto are less than 100 million years in age. Apparently no impact craters in the visible area of pluto.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33543383

[Aethon]

See post #1284, next page.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Aethon

[Camacha]

I rotated the Pluto image 90 degrees so I don't have to tilt my head.

It honestly had not occured to me that the image might have been rotated 'wrong'.

[Godot]

So, have they already published Pics with the cities of the Mi-Go on them?

[Frida Space]

Wow, someone's been doing some fancy 3D renderings.