I’m over-stimulated. I literally can’t take it anymore. These images from Pluto are mind-blowing, but with so many incredible photos released over the past week, I have reached my limit. I can no longer contain my excitement(not that I have in the past). Here are the newest images showing a Pluto we have never seen before. This second image is my favorite. It shows so much depth and detail, and reveals Pluto to be a world, far more than just a boring rock occupying the outer reaches of our solar system. Visible in the image is the layered atmosphere, mountain...
It’s like a birthday to an astronomer when new science data comes in. I will always love seeing new photos from the Pluto system, and with terabytes of data left to download from new horizons, we’re going to have a lot of presents over the next few months. Our latest gift gives us some new images from the flyby, showing surface features and atmosphere. These are stunning. These incredible photos show the surprising complexity of surface features on Pluto. The gorgeous variation in the surface is reminiscent of Mars, amazing considering the lack of sunlight this distant world receives. The long...
With the historic fly-by of Pluto last month, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft gave us an up-close look at the former 9th planet, showing that it is a dynamic world with icy plains, tall mountains, and an atmosphere. But now that New Horizons has passed by Pluto, it has the infinite cosmic horizon in its stead. So what’s next for the $700 Million spacecraft? Its battery will keep it going for a few more decades, and it will likely pass beyond the edge of the solar system, in the stead of the Voyager crafts. What else is ahead? The good news is...
The rendering I’ve been waiting for is finally here! A conceptual video of the flyby of Pluto from far away, leading through closest approach and turning back to see the dark side, all together. This will give you a sense of the motion of New Horizons, and the state of the Pluto system in the Kuiper Belt. The credit goes not just to NASA, but to space enthusiast Björn Jónsson, who created the rendering from the latest Pluto images and data from New Horizons. The strangest part of watching this was the sense of longing I felt as we fly past...
Friday’s science update from the New Horizons team shed some more light on the seemingly endless jaw-dropping discoveries from the Pluto system. We have found a surprising atmosphere and very cold ice flows, contributing to a surprisingly active geology for an object that receives so little sunlight. Seven hours after the craft made its closest approach of Pluto, it turned around and took a backlit shot, revealing two distinct layers of hazy atmosphere at 80 Km and 50 Km above the surface respectively. It looks more like an eclipse photograph from much closer to home, but it shows a hauntingly...
I’m going on vacation tomorrow, but will still be posting some of my own photos hopefully, or just blogging about whatever I feel like, which is what I normally do anyway. So in the meantime, here’s a pic of Charon! This is the first time human eyes have gazed upon such a distant alien world. Stunning.
On July 4th, for about an hour and twenty minutes, my heart stopped. This was the amount of time that New Horizons was quiet. No contact, no data, nothing but the lonely black of space. In this time, the craft did what it was programmed to do. It transferred control to its backup computer, which told the main computer to enter safe mode and suspend all non-essential functions. Then the backup computer attempted to re-establish contact with Earth, 5 Billion Kilometres away. Contact has been re-established with the craft and its backup computer has been transmitting telemetry data back to mission...
As is the case with any final approach to a new object, the early images, with their horrible resolution, pixelated appearance, and possibly false features due to processing, lead to significant speculation on what we will see as the craft approaches. It was the same a few months ago with Ceres. I personally love the blurry images. It’s a mystery waiting to be solved, and we see it unfold as we move ever closer to our destination. It also reminds me of the early days of the internet I grew up with, using a good old 28.8K modem and waiting 2...
This incredible video was just released by the National Space Society as the New Horizons team is primed to receive the first wave of data from the distant Pluto system. It feels more like a movie trailer, except that it is 100% true. I was left speechless by this amazing video and you will be too. The mission comes to a head on July 14th with the close flyby of Pluto and its five moons, though it’s possible there will be more moons discovered during the flyby. If you want the latest mission updates and to follow along, go to http://seeplutonow.com/. I...
New Horizons is giving Earth the A-OK! All the systems look good and we are only 37.4 million kilometres away from Pluto. Yes that is far, but considering we usually see Pluto at a distance 200 times that, we are doing pretty well. The newest processed photos have come in from NASA and John’s Hopkins University, and they are starting to show a complex and mysterious surface chock-full of science goodies that make astronomers salivate like Pavlov’s dog when the bell rang. But image processing is a science in itself, and I wanted to show you the difference between a raw photo...
