New Horizons

[lajoswinkler]

I don't like the fact they're presenting the public with digitally blown up images with enhanced colors of Hydra and Nix. Those will again, as many other things have, enter the public perception as skewed. Just like Venus, which is often shown in UV or radar image, and in fact it looks like a milky-cream gas planet.

[Aethon]

Pluto’s Blue Sky: Pluto’s haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn’s moon Titan. The source of both hazes likely involves sunlight-initiated chemical reactions of nitrogen and methane, leading to relatively small, soot-like particles (called tholins) that grow as they settle toward the surface. This image was generated by software that combines information from blue, red and near-infrared images to replicate the color a human eye would perceive as closely as possible.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Water Ice on Pluto: Regions with exposed water ice are highlighted in blue in this composite image from New Horizons' Ralph instrument, combining visible imagery from the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) with infrared spectroscopy from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA). The strongest signatures of water ice occur along Virgil Fossa, just west of Elliot crater on the left side of the inset image, and also in Viking Terra near the top of the frame. A major outcrop also occurs in Baré Montes towards the right of the image, along with numerous much smaller outcrops, mostly associated with impact craters and valleys between mountains. The scene is approximately 280 miles (450 kilometers) across. Note that all surface feature names are informal.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

http://www.nasa.gov/nh/nh-finds-blue-skies-and-water-ice-on-pluto

[lajoswinkler]

The issue with water ice false color image is that RALPH/MVIC has a much lower resolution than LORRI, so mapping the color to high resolution images does not really give satisfying results. It's like those early prints where one printer would draw the thing and the others would smear some paint on it, usually with some offset, creating mess.

But that haze image is very nice. Interesting to see that most (how much?) of the color due to Rayleigh scattering comes from tiny tholin molecules, and not nitrogen itself. I'd suspect a lot poorer image if it was only nitrogen at such low amounts.

[PB666]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34481347

Blue sky photo from NH.

[Frida Space]

The first ever close-up photo of Styx.

www.nasa.gov/nh/new-horizons-picks-up-styx

[Frida Space]

First paper is out

www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-publishes-first-research-paper-in-science-describing-numerous-pluto-system/

[PB666]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34546042

[Frida Space]

New photos of Pluto and Charon on the raw image site:

Edited October 16, 2015 by Frida Space

[lajoswinkler]

Those dimples usually come in pairs. How unusual.

[Endersmens]

Those dimples usually come in pairs. How unusual.

I totally looked at them as holes until I read this, now I can't see anything but dimples.

[Frida Space]

www.nasa.gov/nh/pluto-puzzling-patterns-and-pits

[lajoswinkler]

No mention of them coming in pairs. It's obvious and so puzzling. Probably has something to do with the internal flows, given that they follow the same pattern, but I can't figure out what's happening.

[Frida Space]

What strikes me most is there size. I mean, they look like small dimples in which you could just put your foot. But actually each one of them is "hundreds of meters wide and tens deep". Just imagine having one of them in front of you.

[lajoswinkler]

They're certainly larger than permafrost holes in Syberia. Perhaps it's the places where some sort of an eutectic mixture of ices seeps towards the surface and causes the more pure surface ices to thaw and collapse in the depths, forming a cavity and then the top material just collapses. It certainly goes along the hypothesis about large Rayleigh-Bénard cells. The distribution might be attributed to the moving of internal flows that come and go. Each time they come, they are moved to the side.

Edited October 17, 2015 by lajoswinkler

[Robotengineer]

Those last two photos look more like something you'd find under a microscope than on a dwarf planet.

[Frida Space]

A mosaic of the latest Charon images.

[Frida Space]

Alan Stern: "TODAY we start maneuvering to our hoped for KBO target; this will take 4 engine burns in 2 weeks, totaling ~57 meters/sec."

[Frida Space]

Kerberos -- now we have (relatively) close up images of all of Pluto's five known moons. And what a weird shape this one has.

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/last-of-pluto-s-moons-mysterious-kerberos-revealed-by-new-horizons

- - - Updated - - -

Also, there's this cool family portrait of Pluto's moons. Last time I checked Nix was much more pixelated, I must have missed something, as the Nix image used in this portrait seems very detailed.

[Streetwind]

Alan Stern: "TODAY we start maneuvering to our hoped for KBO target; this will take 4 engine burns in 2 weeks, totaling ~57 meters/sec."

Do they have the mission extension officially approved yet?

I mean, it looks that way since they obviously haven't all gone home yet, but I didn't hear anything about it.

[Frida Space]

Nope, they haven't had a mission extension yet. New Horizons' nominal mission ends at the end of 2016, when the the last bit of data from the encounter is downlinked. They are performing the maneouvre now because it's more efficient, however until next year we won't know if the extended mission KBO encounter is gonna happen.

[Frida Space]

We now have enough Pluto images to start topographic analysis of the surface! These craters look very deep, almost as if their walls were straight vertical

(it's a GIF, it should load quickly now)

Edited October 22, 2015 by Frida Space

[Ralathon]

Nope, they haven't had a mission extension yet. New Horizons' nominal mission ends at the end of 2016, when the the last bit of data from the encounter is downlinked. They are performing the maneouvre now because it's more efficient, however until next year we won't know if the extended mission KBO encounter is gonna happen.

Was there ever a working scientific probe that did not get a mission extension? Especially on something as exclusive as up close KBO research?

They'd be stupid not to fund a mission extension, it would take decades to get another probe in the area.

[Frida Space]

Was there ever a working scientific probe that did not get a mission extension?

Well, in the White House proposal for NASA's FY2016 Proposal, both the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Opportunity receive 0$, meaning they are basically shut down. But yea, I get what you mean, it would be incredibly stupid and wasteful to not give New Horizons a mission extension. I'm pretty sure they will give it, but still, NH scientists will have to go through the process of saying why it would be worth it to extend the mission etc....

Let's also hope that Congress saves LRO and Opportunity!

[PB666]

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/new-horizons-sets-off-to-its-next-destination-beyond-pluto?

[-ctn-]

Let's also hope that Congress saves LRO and Opportunity!

That makes me so sad. I had to look it up myself. Seems a shame to shut off Opportunity, after such an amazing "over performance" of its design, even if it is getting buggy.