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Color Movie Made of Pluto-Charon System

Posted by samzenpus on from the colour-out-of-space dept.

VernonNemitz writes: Today NASA released a color movie of Pluto and its largest moon Charon, as the New Horizons probe approaches its July 2015 rendezvous date. "It's exciting to see Pluto and Charon in motion and in color," said New Horizons principal examiner Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) at Boulder, Colorado. "Even at this low resolution, we can see that Pluto and Charon have different colours - Pluto is beige-orange, while Charon is grey. Exactly why they are so different is the subject of debate," Stern said.

27 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Movie? by pahles · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's about 10 frames with 20 coloured pixels dancing around each other...

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    Sig?
    1. Re:Movie? by CaptQuark · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is just the first images from over 50 million miles away. It is intended to show the orbital dynamics as the two bodies revolve around a shared center of gravity.

      The more detailed views of the planetoid and its moon will come as the probe gets closer to the pair during the next 23 days.

      ~~

    2. Re:Movie? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      If they start to resemble PacMan, time to worry

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      Table-ized A.I.
    3. Re:Movie? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's about 10 frames with 20 coloured pixels dancing around each other...

      Nasa is just trying to make it interesting for kids and did Minecraft version.

    4. Re:Movie? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And the most difficult thing that you have ever done is park a car? WTF. Give credit where it's due! This is an amazing video that would have been impossible even 10 years ago - yes it's fuzzy, yes it's "incomplete" but hey what an achievement? I'd guess from your comment that your exposure to technology as we know it is two decades at most. Go back 4 decades and you will realise that the video is truly an achievement.

    5. Re:Movie? by Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

      What's ridiculous is that it's made of LORRI images from nearly a month ago. There's much high resolution available now. Here's what Pluto has looked like in the past few days.

      Heck, even years ago we knew that Pluto-Charon looked like this

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      What about the Ant People? They owe us money.
    6. Re:Movie? by Rei · · Score: 1

      Obviously the LORRI images have stars in them that one can use as reference points.

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      What about the Ant People? They owe us money.
    7. Re:Movie? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I just put the popcorn in the microwave and it ended :(

    8. Re:Movie? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah but we want it in 4k

    9. Re:Movie? by Henriok · · Score: 1

      It's too bad then that the movie was centred on Pluto and not the Pluto/Charon barycentre.

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      - Henrik

      - when the Shadows descend -
    10. Re:Movie? by _anomaly_ · · Score: 2

      There are two movies, the first centered on Pluto, the second is a barycentric view.

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      "I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
    11. Re:Movie? by jez9999 · · Score: 1

      Why does Pluto look brownish? Is this false colour, or would it really look that way to the human eye? Wikipedia says the surface is 98% nitrogen ice, which seems to be basically white, so wouldn't one expect it to look white?

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      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
    12. Re:Movie? by Goofy+Android · · Score: 1

      It's obviously a pixel perfect movie! Pixel as in pixel art. Better looking static images can be found on the NASA site, but I guess we'll have to wait a couple more weeks for a ring-side view.

    13. Re:Movie? by Convector · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure the color movie is made of MVIC images. LORRI doesn't do color, but has much higher resolution. The LORRI images (and this movie) can all be found here.

    14. Re:Movie? by oobayly · · Score: 1

      In glorious 2160 X 2160 - check out that pixely goodness.

    15. Re:Movie? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      I had to open the animation in a new window and zoom all the way out to get it to look like anything other than a collection of pixels.

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      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    16. Re:Movie? by Rei · · Score: 1

      Which is why you combine the chroma data from MVIC with the luminance data from LORRI. When you don't have both of the same image then you turn the chroma data into a sphere map and generate the appropriate chroma data to map over your luminance data.

      --
      What about the Ant People? They owe us money.
    17. Re:Movie? by Rei · · Score: 1

      It's believed to be the same reason Titan does (just on a much smaller scale) - photocatalysis of methane ice into a mixture of more complicated hydrocarbons (collectively called "tholins").

      --
      What about the Ant People? They owe us money.
  2. Not what I wanted by frovingslosh · · Score: 2

    I was hoping for a movie of the Pluto / Goofy system.

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    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  3. Familiar? by theronb · · Score: 1

    Looks like Pong, my first video game, but no paddle to whack either object.

  4. Re:Is this a joke? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Really? A post? That looks like it was posted by a chatbot. Even Eliza comments are better than this. I see no reason to believe this is legit and not just a troll by someone who couldn't think of something interesting to say.

  5. Re:Minecraft? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Did I just watch a NASA video shot in Minecraft?

    Their fakery budget has really gone downhill since the Apollo/Kubrick days

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    Table-ized A.I.
  6. Re:Is this a joke? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    There'll probably be higher resolution versions later. Then you'll be able to claim that the shadows are wrong or something.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  7. Re:Is this a joke? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    If I were God, I'd F with NASA and really make Pluto be a bunch of blocks. Everything they'd publish would be assumed an Onion article by the public.

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    Table-ized A.I.
  8. Here's a much better color movie of Pluto by stud9920 · · Score: 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and here's the infamous Charon one https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  9. Re:Is this a joke? by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

    [CronoCloud ~]$ ./eliza.pl
    Eliza: Is something troubling you?
    you: What do you think about the comments on Slashdot?
    Eliza: What do you think?
    you: That's what I'm asking you.
    Eliza: Do you enjoy being asking me?
    you: Yes.
    Eliza: Please tell me some more about this.
    you: Do you read Slashdot?
    Eliza: We were discussing you -- not me.
    you: My original question was asking you about Slashdot.
    Eliza: Tell me more about that.
    you: I'm not going to lmgtfy for you.
    Eliza: Is it because you are not going to lmgtfy for me that you came to me?
    you: No.
    Eliza: Why 'no'?
    you: Just no.
    Eliza: Does this make you feel unhappy?
    you: I wonder if M-x doctor is smarter than you, perl-Chatbot-Eliza.
    Eliza: Do you think its likely that M-x doctor is smarter than me?
    you: Maybe, but I don't like Emacs.
    Eliza: You aren't sure?
    you: No, I haven't compared both.
    Eliza: Why 'no'?
    you: Because I haven't done a systematic comparison of both.
    Eliza: I think you should talk to a REAL analyst. Ciao!

  10. Re:Damn Kids get off my lawn by Convector · · Score: 1

    Yes, it is.