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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: 4, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Saturday December 05 2015, @09:07PM
I grew up reading Heinlein and Asimov, and remember Shepard, Glenn, and the Gemini and Apollo missions.
I am truly amazed that we are sending back pictures from a planet which, when I was a kid, was only visible as a tiny point of light if you could look under exactly the right conditions.
In general terms, the automated missions that have been in the news in the last few years are nothing short of brilliant.
Who knows, maybe someday we'll send some people to these places!
(Score: 1) by Cornwallis on Sunday December 06 2015, @04:00AM
I was in 2nd grade when I first read "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" - still a great over 50 years later - and have never forgotten the Pluto scenes. This picture fits.