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New Horizons Probe Captures Images At Record Distance From Earth (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the galaxy-far-far-away dept.

jwhyche writes: The New Horizons probe has captured the farthermost images of Earth. The probe took images of Earth from a distance of over 3.79 billion miles on December 5th, 2017. This beats the image Voyager 1 captured 27 years ago. The Voyager image was taken at a distance of 3.75 billion miles and has become known as the "Pale Blue Dot" photo. Engadget notes that this new record is likely to be broken again within a matter of months. "The [New Horizons spacecraft] is slated to swing by another Kuiper Belt object (2014 MU69) on January 1st, 2019 and record more imagery in the process," reports Engadget. "So long as the mission goes according to plan, New Horizons could hold on to its lead for a long time."

31 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Looking back into the past by sheramil · · Score: 1

    That works out to a bit over five and a half light-hours... good lord *choke*! We can use this probe to see INTO EARTH'S... radio... transmission... past. A bit.

    1. Re:Looking back into the past by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Funny

      What a vanity mission! We can see the influence of the Facebook indoctrinated generation here:

      We sent up an expensive space probe to take a selfie!

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    2. Re:Looking back into the past by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually, if this worked with enough clarity I bet that the CIA would love it.

      "Dammit, I wish we had a wiretap on this guy three hours ago!"

    3. Re:Looking back into the past by zifn4b · · Score: 3, Funny

      We sent up an expensive space probe to take a selfie!

      Once upon a time there was a plan to build a space elevator. Next project: Space Selfie Stick

      --
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    4. Re:Looking back into the past by meglon · · Score: 2

      On a slightly more serious note, a selfie of the entire planet at that distance probably wouldn't be a bad thing to help remind people of how pretty insignificant our species, and even our planet, is in the grand scheme of the universe. The first one seemed to help some people, although there's a lot of others it could help now if they'd only pull their heads out of their backsides.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

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      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  2. The article is crap by FeelGood314 · · Score: 1

    Beating a 3.75 Billion mile record by 0.04 Billion miles is not smashing a record. The language in the linked article doesn't get much better after that.

    1. Re:The article is crap by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      40,000,000 miles is quite far

    2. Re:The article is crap by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      40,000,000 miles is quite far

      Not really. 40M miles won't even get you to Mars.

    3. Re:The article is crap by Talderas · · Score: 1

      Furthermore, this is a relatively pointless "record" with respect to the pointlessness of records. If you want to "break" it, just design a probe to break it. The record is just getting broken incidentally or because the probe is in a position during its mission to snap the photo.

      --
      "Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
    4. Re: The article is crap by Ranbot · · Score: 2

      Your links don't really prove anything, but this one does: https://www.space.com/16875-ho...

      To your point the theoretical shortest distance to Mars in ~33M miles, but the planets' orbits rarely ever get that close to each other. The average distance between Earth and Mars orbits is ~140M miles, and launches use the most fuel efficient path, which [counter-intuitively] is not the shortest path. So ShanhaiBill is correct that 40M miles doesn't get you to Mars.

    5. Re:The article is crap by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

      When was the last time you travelled 40 million miles? Never? I thought so.

    6. Re:The article is crap by Baton+Rogue · · Score: 1

      I traveled 584 million miles last year. So did you!

    7. Re:The article is crap by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

      You forgot a few things.
      Depending where you are on the surface of Earth, you travel up to 40,075km every day.
      There's also the orbit our solar system takes around our galaxy and the movement of our galaxy in the universe.

      You also forgot this is a record from Earth, so none of that matters.

    8. Re:The article is crap by BoogieChile · · Score: 1

      Well, I racked up 11,972,000,000 miles last year, so I don't know what planet you've been living on, but it's clearly an awful long way from here by now.

    9. Re:The article is crap by BoogieChile · · Score: 1

      About half an hour ago, actually.

  3. a better link please? by swell · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Engadget page linked has 9 trackers and 21 scripts according to my sources. Slashdot often sends us to Engadget. Ever wonder why? The NASA page has the same information without the crap and far fewer trackers and scripts. But maybe NASA doesn't kick back anything to Slashdot. I don't know but I'm really getting tired of these crappy links to second class news sources. Try this site: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/n...

    --
    ...omphaloskepsis often...
    1. Re:a better link please? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Neither the Engadget site nor the NASA site load at all without Javascript enabled. Is there any version of this news available in standards-compliant HTML?

    2. Re:a better link please? by tquasar · · Score: 1

      I try to practice safe web behavior. I clicked an unknown link and got the BSOD from a site in Argentina. Doh! It took some time to fix my laptop.

  4. Correction by meglon · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not the farthest picture of earth, its the farthest picture from earth. The twin images the link goes to is actually a couple of KBO's (2012 HZ84 and 2012 HE85). The first image it took was of the Wishing Well open star cluster.

    The pale blue dot is still the farthest away picture of earth itself.

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    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    1. Re:Correction by StatureOfLiberty · · Score: 5, Informative

      This article is the most poorly worded article I have read in a long time. It was not at all clear what they meant. However, the NASA link is quite clear.

      https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-captures-record-breaking-images-in-the-kuiper-belt

      It is not the farthest picture from earth. It was not taken from earth, or even near earth. It is not the picture itself they are talking about. It is the space probe that took it. New Horizons was the furthest from Earth of any space probe that has taken a picture (any picture).

      Voyager 1 was 3.75 billion miles away from Earth when it took a picture. It just so happens it was a picture of Earth.
      New Horizons was 3.79 billion miles away from Earth when it took a picture. (That is the record they are talking about).

    2. Re:Correction by meglon · · Score: 1

      Right. Your wording is better than mine.

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      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  5. Shouldn't it have been a line segment, not a disc? by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 1

    After all -- isn't the earth flat?

  6. Re:Shouldn't it have been a line segment, not a di by Calydor · · Score: 4, Funny

    You're seeing it from above because the turtle is shy.

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  7. Yo momma's so fat... by johannesg · · Score: 1

    When New Horizons spotted her from the Kuiper Belt, astronomers assigned her object code "2018 YMFA"!

  8. Let's enhance it! by Kiuas · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's some pretty impressive zoom, but can we enhance it?

    --
    "It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
    1. Re:Let's enhance it! by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      ...

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  9. miles? by Frederic54 · · Score: 1

    me and 6.7 billions people does not understand miles.
    You mean 40.8 AU ?

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    1. Re:miles? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      You mean 40.8 AU ?

      You aussies need to impose your units everywhere.

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      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    2. Re:miles? by meglon · · Score: 1

      Wait, i'll do the conversion for you... lets see, if i start with hectares in a furlong, per stone of the average European swallow.... or was that an African swallow....

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  10. Farthest FROM Earth, not OF Earth by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    The New Horizons probe has captured the farthermost images of Earth. The probe took images of Earth

    No it didn't. The images are not of Earth.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  11. Point the probe camera back towards earth! by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

    I want to take a selfie!

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