Pluto Up and Close and Personal
Pluto and Charon Shine in False Color, SpaceRef
“New Horizons has obtained impressive new images of Pluto and its large moon Charon that highlight their compositional diversity. These are not actual color images of Pluto and Charonthey are shown here in exaggerated colors that make it easy to note the differences in surface material and features on each planetary body.”
New Spectacular Pluto Image Released, SpaceRef
“As New Horizons flew by Pluto on its closet approach today NASA released the best ever image of the planet. Should the spacecraft has survived its closet approach and did collect the data it was expected to, we should see much more stunning images in the coming days.”
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Thank God Pluto was still a planet when this mission was being planned.
It once was the ninth little planet,
Before someone moved to ban it.
Now the New Horizons probe,
Proves that Pluto’s a globe.
Will anyone tell them to can it? 😉
That Pluto is spherical was never in question.
Space Shorts: What is a Dwarf Planet?: https://youtu.be/Er5L6cxnRTc
If we find a super sized planet beyond Pluto, that still hasn’t cleared orbit, it would be silly to call it a dwarf planet.
Can you explain why a super-sized object would NOT have cleared its orbit?
In THIS solar system we obey the laws of physics, young man. 😉
I’d have to check the numbers, but I don’t think an Earth-sized planet at 40 AU would have cleared its orbital zone in the age of the solar system. That depends on orbital period and the orbits of the surrounding objects, not just the planet’s mass.
Well, Neptune doesn’t seem to have cleared Pluto out of crossing its orbit and Neptune seems pretty big.
Maybe there is a lot of junk out there and it just hasn’t had enough time.
Didn’t hurt the mission to Ceres. Nor the Titan lander.
Nor does the lack of planetary status dull the enthusiasm for a dedicated mission to Europa.
Going to Titan or Europa would be really cool and I look forward to it and I’m sure the public will love it.
But,… the public response won’t be anything close to the Pluto Mania we have seen today.
I went to a public telescope viewing of Pluto at a major public science venue this evening. The traffic jam and crowd where huge and the enthusiasm was something you had to experience to appreciate. In response to the thread about space nerds, the thing that most impressed me with the crowd was the diversity of people there. Sure there were ‘space nerds’ but there were people of every description and more languages than I could hear in attendance and really keyed up just to get a glimpse of Pluto on this historic day for themselves. Judging from the questions, the average scientific literacy of the crowd was, frankly, pretty pathetic, but they were interested, curious, enthusiastic and despite the traffic challenges, they were there.
It is obvious that the general public senses that this was much more than just another first planetary encounter and that this was about much more than just Pluto. There is a very public understanding that this is the last of the big firsts in our solar system, that we have completed the initial reconnaissance of our own neighborhood, and have remarkably done so within the life span of the average person alive today.
This was a REALLY BIG DEAL.
Largely so because in the public mind Pluto is a planet in a way that asteroids, moons, comments, KBO’s, etc. never can be. All the ‘astronomy nerds’ and ‘space nerds’ are just going to have to accept the fact that the word and concept of “planet” have been with us since ancient times, far predating anything like the modern concept of science, and that in the public mind, Pluto is and always will be the 9th planet of our sun and that today was special in a way that no mission to Ceres or Titan or Europa, etc. ever could be.
Don’t fight it or argue about it, just accept that this succeeded in being a significant driver of public enthusiasm for space exploration.
“Meanwhile on Pluto, authorities said the strange object seen passing
across the sky was probably a weather balloon or swamp gas…..”
Planet, Dwarf planet, KBO, what ever you chose to call it, it’s one beautiful and majestic sight and proves once again just how utterly amazing our solar system and the universe as a whole is.This is exactly what exploration is about.
Gee, thanks a lot NASA. Now we all have to buy new Pluto globes. 😉
One you realize that the white shape at the bottom is Pluto the Dog’s head, you can’t unsee it.
🙂
Everyone was waiting for Pluto, then NASA showed us something Goofy…..
A picture is worth a thousand worlds.
More correct. They call it a heart. I just see a bright blob. The right side keeps going. it does not cut off to show an edge of the heart.
Spectacular, although it will take months to transmit and process all the flyby data I am very excited to get the first pictures of closest approach tonight!
Yes, it is confirmed to be larger than Eris.
No, I don’t think anyone would be happy with that definition for Planet.
How well do know the radius of Eris? The new measurement of Pluto is within the uncertainty of the older estimate. Near the high end of that range, but still within the error bars. Unless the size of Eris is more accurately known than I think, I’m not sure we can say for sure which is larger.
The diameter of Pluto could not be found because it has an atmosphere. It distorted the stars seen through it. Eris must not have an atmosphere.
Even without an atmosphere, Eris is a long way away to measure its radius at the few kilometer level. Most techniques aren’t good to +-100 km. But apparently someone did. I checked: Sicardy et al. reported a good, stellar occultation of Eris in 2010. The stated uncertainty is 6 km. So that makes Pluto’s radius greater by 22 +- 12 km. That’s a surprisingly small 2% difference.
But Eris is denser, therefore got more mass. It appears that Pluto got a higher fraction of ice in it’s makeup than Eris.
So like in the 90s TV series Xena (Eris formerly known as) lords it over Hades (aka Pluto)..
Larger but slightly less massive. Density of Pluto 1.87, Eris 2.52
I don’t think any planet would be happy, or human being.