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from the worth-much-more-than-a-thousand-words dept.
Phys.Org has some super close up pictures of Pluto that just arrived from the New Horizons spacecraft.
Each week the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft transmits data stored on its digital recorders from its flight through the Pluto system on July 14. These latest pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel – revealing features less than half the size of a city block on Pluto's diverse surface.
One of the most interesting images appears to show snow drift like ice ridges in the flat frozen sections of water ice. The ridges look evenly spaced, as if drifted by wind, or amassed by accretion at the edges of a growing sheet of ice, not unlike ice flows off the Coast of Alaska
The pictures were obtained with an unusual observing mode; instead of working in the usual "point and shoot," the LORRI camera snapped pictures every three seconds while the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) aboard New Horizons was scanning the surface. This mode requires unusually short exposures to avoid blurring the images.
Be sure to watch the linked video: New Horizons' Best View of Pluto's Craters, Mountains and Icy Plains.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday December 05 2015, @09:00PM
The pictures were obtained with an unusual observing mode; instead of working in the usual "point and shoot," the LORRI camera snapped pictures every three seconds
Why is that unusual? I thought it was standard aerial mapping technique, taking photos with a fixed still camera at intervals such that each frame slightly overlapped the previous.
I used to have an ex-WW2 electro-mechanical timer to do this, as used on spy planes, a box about 10" cubed. My father bought it to tinker with from a military surplus shop, then gave it to me. Even at a young age I was impressed by the quality of it, especially as it was made in wartime conditions - tiny ball bearings and so on.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 05 2015, @10:28PM
You for got to read all the way to the end of the sentence:
while the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) aboard New Horizons was scanning the surface.
Two cameras, working interleaved, and images composed of data from both (probably on earth). Shoot LORRI, shoot MVIC, Scan MVIC, Store both datasets.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.