New Horizons' First Ultra High Resolution Photos of Pluto Released

StartsWithABang writes: After a 9 year journey to Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto this past July, taking so much data that it will take a full 16 months to send it all back. The first of the highest resolution photos ever taken were released by NASA earlier today, and before the data has even been scientifically analyzed, a visual inspection teaches us a number of things about its sedimentary history, its active geology and its transient, eroding mountainous terrain. Perhaps the best part: Pluto is the prototype for the most common type of world in the Universe, even though it's not a planet anymore.

Comments

Fascinating

[Tablizer]

What an amazing pla....uh...round thing!

Re:Fascinating

[Rei]

It's okay, the New Horizons team still calls it a planet.

Re:Fascinating

[Hognoxious]

It's the top of BaitsForAClick's bald head. He shaved it because he thinks it makes him look like a badass biker.

Re:Fascinating

[jc42]

It's okay, the New Horizons team still calls it a planet.

And we might also note that, by conventional English syntax, "dwarf planet" means a kind of planet, one somewhat smaller than average. Somehow, a lot of people don't seem to understand English syntax well enough to figure that out. ;-)

Of course, we don't have a good enough sample yet to say what size an average planet (without modifiers) might look like.

Is it a planet again

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it a planet again?

Lots of crinkly coastlines

[MichaelSmith]

Slartibartfast must be proud.

Re:Lots of crinkly coastlines

[Mal-2]

Slartibartfast must be proud.

I'd think this terrain appeals more to cold fjord.

Re:Lots of crinkly coastlines

[Anonymous Coward]

He isn't going to see your post. For some odd reason he only shows up in threads about NSA or Snowden.

Re:Tom Baker

[Anonymous Coward]

Genesis of the Daleks, FTW.

https://torcache.net/torrent/3...

Commonality and heat pumps

[Tablizer]

Pluto is the prototype for the most common type of world in the Universe

It may be true that Kuiper-belt-like objects are the most common kind, but Pluto is probably unique in that it comes relatively close to the sun, and the temporary heat is likely what causes the "pumping action" that shapes Pluto's dynamic geology. Bodies further out may not get enough energy from the sun to drive similar processes.

But being we've only seen one so far*, we can only speculate. Although other large Kuiper bodies are (on average) further away, they may still come close enough on occasion for some of the same heat/cold pump cycling action.

Eris is a possible example. It comes about as close as Pluto does but swings further away. It would be interesting to see how a wider temperature range shapes it.

* Some moons of the gas giants may be from the Kuiper belt, but being close to a large planet shapes them in ways that makes it difficult to know what they originally were like.

Re:Commonality and heat pumps

[Rei]

There's also the possibility of much larger objects further out - we're not very good at detecting objects in our solar system at 100+ AU. WISE effectively ruled out Jupiter and Saturn sized bodies a good way out toward the Oort Cloud, but there could be Mars-sized bodies as near as 100-200 AU and Earth-sized bodies as near as a few hundred AU, and potentially Uranus/Neptune sized bodies further than that.

I really look forward to the LSST coming online in a few years - the number of discoveries it should make should be incredible. :) Its not the largest telescope under construction but it's designed to be a data flood - its 3,2 gigapixel camera will produce up to 30 TB of data per night. Virtually anything of significant size that moves in the solar system, it's going to see it. It's expected to, for example, detect 100% of all KBOs larger than 100km, whereas we only know of an estimated 1% of them today.

Re:Commonality and heat pumps

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also the possibility of much larger objects further out - we're not very good at detecting objects in our solar system at 100+ AU. WISE effectively ruled out Jupiter and Saturn sized bodies a good way out toward the Oort Cloud, but there could be Mars-sized bodies as near as 100-200 AU and Earth-sized bodies as near as a few hundred AU, and potentially Uranus/Neptune sized bodies further than that.

Got any references for this line of thought? It's sounds fascinating, particularly as I was taught Pluto +/- a smidge would be the limit for body size within our outer heliosphere.

Re:Commonality and heat pumps

[Rei]

Where were you taught this and on what grounds was it based? Look up the sednoids** - one of the three leading theories to explain their orbits is that there's a large (~inner planet sized) body orbiting out there. The other two include a close pass with another star or other large object (although this has fallen out of favor), and other large bodies being near the sun during the formation of the solar system that have since moved apart. But a planet seems to offer the most explanatory value.

** The short of it is that the closest that they ever get to the sun is well too far away for any large known body in our solar system to have scattered them, yet they have highly elliptical orbits. Yet both of the sednoids with established arguments of perihelion (there's a third, V774104, for which it's as of yet unknown) curiously have the same argument of perihelion, which makes single-pass scattering events unlikely, and even ancient scattering events unlikely, as their arguments of perihelion should have been randomized by the weak interactions with the gas giants since then.

Re:Commonality and heat pumps

[tarpitcod]

Any idea when an estimate for the perihelion for V774104 will come in? Would LSST help? This is all fascinating stuff - thanks for posting it.

Re:Commonality and heat pumps

[Tablizer]

There's also the possibility of much larger objects further out...

That certainly may be true, but for larger objects to have avoided detection thus far, they are probably too far away from the Sun to be affected by it often enough.

Even IF such further objects do swing close to the sun on occasion, they probably due so too infrequently for the "heat pump" action to make much difference to their geology.

We've probably spotted all the larger ones with shorter-period orbits, because those have to be fairly close to the sun to have short periods; and those with longer period orbits probably won't get sun-heat often enough to have significant Pluto-like dynamism, even if they do have a highly elliptical sun-visiting orbit.

If we do find a Mars/Earth-sized object further out, I bet its surface is not nearly as dynamic as Pluto's. But it would be an interesting find regardless.

I suppose it's possible such a large object could come really close to the sun during its infrequent visits such as to have "big melt" events. But most likely Jupiter and company would have mucked up its orbit by now the same way it bleeps with comets. Something in a "stable" orbit would probably not come much closer than Neptune. We may find something out there that used to have such "melty" visits until Jupiter/Saturn "fixed" its orbit.

Re:Commonality and heat pumps

[Ranbot]

It may be true that Kuiper-belt-like objects are the most common kind, but Pluto is probably unique in that it comes relatively close to the sun, and the temporary heat is likely what causes the "pumping action" that shapes Pluto's dynamic geology. Bodies further out may not get enough energy from the sun to drive similar processes....

If I'm reading you correctly I disagree that that direct heat energy (rays) from the sun is the main driver of geologic processes on Pluto. Pluto's orbit is so far out that the Sun would be about 1000 times dimmer than on earth, so Sun's ability to drive weather and, in turn, geologic processes would be severely limited to say the least. I think it's more likely Pluto's 5 orbiting moons exert varying gravitational forces on Pluto's core creating friction and heat from within the dwarf planet driving geologic processes. Charon in particular is about half as large as Pluto and would likely exert a relatively strong gravitational force as it orbits. It would be like how the Earth's moon exerts force on the earth, or Saturn exerts force on it's moon Enceladus [with a liquid ocean and geysers]. Even on the Earth where the sun's rays are strong, geologic processes driven by the sun (i.e. weather and water cycles) are arguably less influential than mantle thermodynamics driving crustal plate movement and volcanic activity.

Re:Tom Baker

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC has been spewing anti-Baker hatred for a long time now and it needs to stop.

Re:Tom Baker

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom Baker was great, no doubt. But I don't think he was the best. I think the best was the guy before him, Pertwee. Troughton was also outstanding and, IMO, better than Tom Baker. Unfortunately, so many Troughton stores are gone that he doesn't get some of the credit he deserves. McCoy was actually good, but the writing wasn't that great for him. I'd put Davison ahead of him. The writing was also pretty awful for Colin Baker, who doesn't deserve a lot of the hate he gets. I'd say Pertwee was the best, then Troughton, and then Tom Baker.

But remember kids, it's not a planet!

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like a fucking planet to me

Re:But remember kids, it's not a planet!

[Doc_Gamesh]

A fucking planet? Cool! Where can I get tickets?

The whole business of classifying Pluto as a planet or a dwarf planet is something that the IAU decided on. Really, it's a matter of having a useful definition for what they mean when they say "planet". Pluto doesn't meet one of three main criteria they applied (Admittedly they failed to take your opinion of what it looks like into account). But it's only a rule to them. It applies to their internal conversations and to their communications with the rest of the world. You can call Pluto a planet if you want.

Re:But remember kids, it's not a planet!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can call Pluto a planet if you want.

Thank you!

Re:But remember kids, it's not a planet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Titan looks like a planet to me, so it MUST be a planet. Fuck those arbitrary orbital criteria.

Re:But remember kids, it's not a planet!

[Applehu Akbar]

If we can send New Horizons to Eris after it finishes sending the Raw images from the Pluto flyby, that should settle the question of whether Pluto is the outermost planet or the innermost KBO.

Re:But remember kids, it's not a planet!

[bzipitidoo]

They could have waited. Should have let Pluto stay a planet, officially, until after New Horizons' visit. Could have said that they would wait on the data from New Horizons before making a decision. What was the harm in that, or, why did they want to refine the definition when they did? What was so urgent that they couldn't wait?

Rushing to demote Pluto ahead of the New Horizon's visit is a slap to the US. Pluto is the only planet discovered by the US. It is largely because of that, and because Pluto was regarded as a planet, that there was enough backing from American public for the New Horizons mission to happen at all. What is the IAU trying to do, discourage space exploration?

Re:But remember kids, it's not a planet!

[Doc_Gamesh]

They could have waited. Should have let Pluto stay a planet, officially, until after New Horizons' visit. Could have said that they would wait on the data from New Horizons before making a decision. What was the harm in that, or, why did they want to refine the definition when they did? What was so urgent that they couldn't wait?

New Horizons' visit hasn't changed anything in that regard. Pluto was reclassified - I don't know why you'd think it was a demotion - primarily because it's one of many similar objects out on the fringes of the Solar System, it just happened to be the first one that we discovered. But we had figured out that it had a lot of company well before New Horizons got there and its visit hasn't corrected or altered that knowledge.

Did you know that Ceres, Vesta and a bunch of other asteroids were classed as planets for a while? And before that even our moon and the Sun were? But people got more data and felt that calling those bodies "planets" didn't make sense any more. That's all that's happened to Pluto. It's still the same object it always was, just we know a bit more about it now.

As regards the other stuff, to the best of my knowledge it was Neil de Grasse Tyson, an American scientist, who was the most vocal advocate for the change.

Re:But remember kids, it's not a planet!

[Doc_Gamesh]

If we can send New Horizons to Eris after it finishes sending the Raw images from the Pluto flyby, that should settle the question of whether Pluto is the outermost planet or the innermost KBO.

Eris isn't possible - due to fuel, and other, limitations. Looks like it's next stop KBO 2014 MU69!

Anyone else see the Hobbit door at 0:31?

[tlambert]

Anyone else see the Hobbit door at 0:31?

Just wondering...

Re:Anyone else see the Hobbit door at 0:31?

[hcs_$reboot]

With that messy ground, i guess you may see whatever you want to see.. Did you watch a Peter Jackson movie recently?

Re:Anyone else see the Hobbit door at 0:31?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see boobies.

Re:Anyone else see the Hobbit door at 0:31?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . and here I was wondering why the Plutonians carved the face of Elvis into the landscape of Pluto . . .

Re:Anyone else see the Hobbit door at 0:31?

[tlambert]

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and at -240 degrees Celcius, that means Pluto.”

Re:Anyone else see the Hobbit door at 0:31?

[Black LED]

It's Fwiffo.

Fjords

[Anonymous Coward]

These photos make me pine for the fjords.

Re:Um yeah um....

[Rei]

Are you an "average American"? Then the answer is "less than $2".

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome pictures of a planet that's over 7 billion kilometers away! I wonder what the Kardashians are doing...

Re: Tom Baker

[Anonymous Coward]

Pertwee, definitely!

Re:Corporate welfare

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of 3D-printed evil Space Nutter republicans saying MOO!

Re:Tom Baker

[rossdee]

Pertwee is #1 and Tennant is the second best. Tom Baker is only 3rd IMHO

Re:Corporate welfare

[Applehu Akbar]

That would be my local astronomy club.

No blacks, I see....

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. July 12th article on the same page:
"The Women who Power NASAâ(TM)s New Horizons Mission to Pluto"

So they stopped 23-25% of the workforce from being male, i.e. DEPRIVED MEN of those jobs, and yet they couldn't find a single black woman with the brains to do it! Ha!

Still in Black and White.

[Cammi]

WTF? They should at least attach a color camera to the thing ... embarrassing..

6 Miles?

[FrankDrebin]

I get that NASA is a US-based and funded organization, so they must put U.S. customary measurements like miles on images for public consumption. But why not at least put *both* measurement scales on these images? Everyone knows they actually do all their science, and operate internally, exclusively in metric.

Re:6 Miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because very few people even care. If they said 6 ooglogs it would be equally relevant to 99% of the population while the other 1% have no problem thinking in whatever units are presented. Only 0.000001% of the people who have a need to feel superior worry about that sort of thing.

I feel lucky to live in this age.

[tarpitcod]

I know to many it's probably boring, but having grown up as a kid seeing the amazing images from Voyager, seeing these is a real treat, I feel lucky to live in an age where such things are possible.

It's cool on so many nerd levels too. It's cool to be able to see these images, but it's also awesomely cool to be able to dig into the details of how it all works, from communication link budgets to the software to the RTG's etc.

Re:I feel lucky to live in this age.

[thinkwaitfast]

This was he thing that nerds used to be into before the comic book crowd took over and everyone with a batman hood was a nerd.

A planet

[si3n4]

and yet we don't insist on saying Jupiter isn't a planet but is a gas giant planet or just a big ass planet and we don't insist that earth isn't a planet but a rocky planet. The embarrassing result of the Pluto images is that it is clear the damn thing is a planet with real active geology and not just a dead chunk of leftovers. Better to call it an ice planet or something that refers to that unique reality. And in general call it what it is - a planet.

Re:A planet

[Rei]

I've seen that referred to as the "Captain Kirk" test. If the Enterprise were to approach a large body in space, and Captain Kirk would look at it and say, "Scotty, beam us down to that planet" (rather than "asteroid" or "comet" or whatever else), then a definition for what's a planet should ideally encompass it. That is, to say, it matches peoples' expectations of what a planet is vs. what an asteroid is - big enough that it's pulled itself into a sphere and in the process released heat causing differentiation and such, rather than a lumpy, undifferentiated body of primordial materials. One never sees Captain Kirk go, "Scotty, beam us down to that... hmm, wait a second.... Mr. Spock, can you run a scan on this star system? We need to know if this object has "cleared its neighborhood"... wait a minute, we're not in orbit around the sun, so by definition it can't be considered a planet..."

It's not that "Captain Kirk" defines a standard for scientific rigor - actually the "standard" is based on precisely the opposite, how the general public expects to see the word "planet" used. The scientific community is free to define terms however they want, but they should in general not coopt common terms to mean things in contradiction with how the word is generally used. "Planet" is a term wherein the general usage describes its size and shape, not "whatever other things cross its orbit". It's perfectly fine to want to have a term for bodies that have other large bodies cross their orbit - but since that's not how the word "planet" is used, they should have picked a new term.

Where's the SKYWAY???

[DrPeper]

I'm surprised no one has made this reference, but I for one am shocked to not see the Skyway!