A reason to get up early

[DRT]

Also, it’s hiding behind its umbrella. It is using the radio dish as protection against any dust particles — quite important when travelling at 9 miles a second.

Indeed. Let's hope nothing hits the umbrella otherwise it would all have been for nothing.

[LGTrotter]

Does this mean that the Oort cloud will be visited soon? Or has Voyager got there already, all unbeknownst to me?

[DRT]

Does this mean that the Oort cloud will be visited soon? Or has Voyager got there already, all unbeknownst to me?

Here is a nice explanation for you. Hew Horizons is currently just past the number 10 on the scale...

Screen Shot 2015-07-11 at 17.11.29.png (463.12 KiB) Viewed 5836 times

It has taken almost a decade to travel 9AU (1 astronomical unit, being the Sun>Earth average distance) and has to travel 220 times that distance through the Kuiper Belt to reach the Oort Cloud. Don't wait up.

[DRT]

Also, it’s hiding behind its umbrella. It is using the radio dish as protection against any dust particles — quite important when travelling at 9 miles a second.

Indeed. Let's hope nothing hits the umbrella otherwise it would all have been for nothing.

It appears this is incorrect.

Download this app (Mac only) to see what will actually happen over the next few days. Once the app launches hit the preview button (top left) and then crank the time rate (bottom centre) up to 30min/sec. You will see New Horizons spinning around to point its instruments at various objects in the Pluto system during the approach. When it points to Earth it is presumably sending back data. When the counter (bottom left) gets close to nearest approach slow the rate down to 1m/sec for a good look at what New Horizons is doing in that critical hour as it passes through the Pluto system. Less than an hour later it is pointed at Earth for a prolonged period. A few hours after that we will see the first picture.

Until a few weeks ago the best picture we had of Pluto was this...

Hubble.jpg (125.79 KiB) Viewed 5824 times

Yesterday New Horizons sent us this...

Screen Shot 2015-07-12 at 07.20.54.png (192.61 KiB) Viewed 5824 times

The pictures we are getting now are at a resolution of 17km per pixel. At closest approach we will see 100m per pixel, which I am reliably informed is as detailed as we have seen any other Solar System object from above the surface.

As our friend would say - woo woo!

[LGTrotter]

Thank you for the update regarding the Oort Cloud. I think I found the name so inviting I could not resist mentioning it and the diagram I looked at of it seemed to show it a bit nearer than yours. It is all rather lovely these photos of Pluto, please post more when you get them. Is it Sedna next?

[jdaw1]

Is it Sedna next?

There are no plans to visit Sedna. If we were to, it should be later this century, but there are no plans for that.

[DRT]

Is it Sedna next?

As part of an extended mission, the spacecraft is expected to head farther into the Kuiper Belt to examine one or two of the ancient, icy mini-worlds in that vast region, at least a billion miles beyond Neptune’s orbit.

I do not know whether or not the targets have been chosen. Much will depend on where the various KB objects are in their orbit around the Sun. Sedna takes 11,400 years to do that so a whole lot of fortunate circumstance will have to fall into place if New Horizons is going to make it anywhere close to another significant object anytime soon.

[jdaw1]

New Horizons is moving fast, and its remaining smidge of fuel can do only small changes of direction. Three possible next targets were identified by Hubble in the last few years, but they’re all nameless rocks, perhaps a few dozen km across.

Edit: see “Suitable KBOs” in this wikipedia page, and also see 2014_MU69.

[Alex Bridgeman]

Unfortunately I can't quote DRT's New Horizon's picture of Pluto, but I swear I can make out some branding and a vintage date upside down at the bottom of the sphere. It looks like
"..64
..N..
..C.."

Any idea who the shipper might be?

[jdaw1]

Nasa reports that New Horizons has phoned home to say that it is alive and full of pictures.

Phew!

Pictures will come over the next 1⅓ years.

[PhilW]

Pictures will come over the next 1⅓ years.

Just before it went out of contact we did also get the following image which is much higher resolution than all previous, though I am sure will be superseded over the next few days:

[DRT]

I watched the "phone home" session live at around 2am this morning. It was quite a heart warming site to see transition from tense anticipation to relief and elation on the faces of so many people who have dedicated the best part of their careers to such a major achievement.

They now need to stop messing around and send us some pictures!

[DRT]

I am reliably informed that the first high resolution pictures have now been received and processed by NASA and will be released at 20:00 this evening.

[LGTrotter]

Is it too early to speculate why there are no impact craters on Pluto? And how does vulcanicity work in such circumstances, without the gravitational heating thing?

[jdaw1]

Nasa has a page showing Views of Pluto Through the Years. The first image of that is as follows.

To a casual observer this seems taller than wide. Could the positions of Pluto and Charon be superimposed on this? That is, might the apparent ‘tallness’ have been caused by Charon?

DRT: if so desired, re-post this where an answer might be forthcoming (though linking back to here).

[DRT]

Is it too early to speculate why there are no impact craters on Pluto? And how does vulcanicity work in such circumstances, without the gravitational heating thing?

I have a theory that you might wish to ponder, challenge, refute or ridicule at your leisure.

The early Earth was once struck by a large planetary object. The impact ejected matter into orbit around the Earth that eventually formed the Moon - a geologically dead world that has subsequently been covered almost entirely with impact craters. The Earth, being larger and having suffered the energetic thump of the impact still to this day has a molten core, vulcanicity, plate tectonics and almost no craters.

Pluto and Charon could be very similar to the Earth and the Moon, only smaller, colder and from an impact that is much closer to today than when the Earth and Moon-creating object hit one another. So Pluto is, or was astronomically recently, still alive and re-generating its surface, whilst Charon is half way towards being as dead as our Moon.

Thoughts?

[DRT]

Nasa has a page showing Views of Pluto Through the Years. The first image of that is as follows.

To a casual observer this seems taller than wide. Could the positions of Pluto and Charon be superimposed on this? That is, might the apparent ‘tallness’ have been caused by Charon?

DRT: if so desired, re-post this where an answer might be forthcoming (though linking back to here).

To my eyes that picture is four pixels by four pixels. I suspect the light and dark are simply a very low resolution depiction of the very large patches of dark and light that we can now see clearly.

[jdaw1]

of the very large patches of dark and light that we can now see clearly.

The largest of which is Charon. Is it possible to know, as of that picture, whether Pluto-Charon was up-down or left-right. Or even if one was transiting the other?

[jdaw1]

The Earth, being larger and having suffered the energetic thump of the impact still to this day has a molten core

Core heat not solely caused by the impact. The Theia impact was a glancing blow — why the moon has less iron than the Earth, and even without that impact a large body like the Earth would have plenty of heat residual from its formation.

plate tectonics

Cause by molten core.

and almost no craters.

A good atmosphere causes many potential impacts to burn up before collision, and then erodes the evidence of those that hit ground. As does the tectonics, and the atmosphere-related existence of rain.

[LGTrotter]

I may be a little far gone in my five am red ale for this but here goes.

In re; the Earth has a molten core which was caused by a collision in which a moon sized lump was knocked off; I don't think this can be true, I'm sure it would have made it hotter but surely it was already hot, just cooling down slowly?

Also Sharon (as in my whimsical way I have renamed her) is not even nearly round, no nor even an oblate spheroid, Julian, in case you are listening, which has no relavence except it occurred to me while I was looking a four pixels depicting Pluto.

Good work, keep it up. Any new pictures to gawp at would be welcome.

[LGTrotter]

And I think that Derek is right that tectonics has more to do with the lack of impact craters on Earth than the weather.

[DRT]

of the very large patches of dark and light that we can now see clearly.

The largest of which is Charon. Is it possible to know, as of that picture, whether Pluto-Charon was up-down or left-right. Or even if one was transiting the other?

The Pluto system has an orbital plane that is at almost 90° to its orbit around the Sun. From Earth it looks like a dart board - the Moons never transit the Pluto disk from where we see it.

Pluto is approximately 1,200km in diameter. Charon is approximately 20,000km from Pluto. That is a lot of blackness that is absent in the picture shown above. If Pluto was just one of those pixels, Charon would be smaller than one pixel that was 16 to 17 pixels away in one direction.

[DRT]

I did not intend to suggest that a molten core was caused by a collision, but that it would add energy to the already burning fire and prolong the period over which it cooled.

Pluto can never have had an atmosphere capable of causing the surface erosion that the Earth's atmosphere does. It is too cold and too small.

The very close proximity of Pluto and Shazza are another possible explanation for their geologic activity. In cosmological terms they are very close together and are the only two bodies we know of that are doubly tidally locked.

[DRT]

One for Owen...

Screen Shot 2015-07-17 at 01.18.17.png (466.77 KiB) Viewed 5710 times

Interesting to note that the picture above seems to be a zoomed-in view of a part of the planet that is not the part that the diagram suggests.

Conspiracy theories begin with such pictures.

[jdaw1]

planet

?