CNET is reporting Beautiful new photos of Pluto show terrain, atmosphere.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has long since passed by Pluto, and is currently 4.96 billion kilometers (4.59 light hours) from Earth. But things are not over with yet. It is still sending back data and images from its flyby. On Earth we have the hydrological cycle in Greenland and the South Pole where water evaporates, falls as snow, builds up glaciers, which then flow out to restart the cycle. It appears that something very similar is happening on Pluto, but because of the incredibly frigid temperatures, this process is occurring with frozen Nitrogen.
NASA has stunning pictures and more complete descriptions.
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Beautiful New Photos of Pluto Show Terrain, Atmosphere
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday September 19 2015, @04:38PM
I wonder if Pluto will get promoted back to planet status. It's round, it has an atmosphere, it has glacial activity, the surface is obviously active, otherwise there'd be more non-eroded craters.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 19 2015, @10:32PM
IMO, yeah, it's a planet. It dominates everything in it's orbit. It is the primary, and it has satellites of it's own. That, along with the conditions you have cited, makes it a planet. I've read the reasons for demoting Pluto several times, and it just doesn't make sense to me.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pinchy on Saturday September 19 2015, @05:35PM
Sad to see nasa make there website only viewable with javascript enabled.
One of the few tech sites that you could browse with links-g.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Saturday September 19 2015, @06:37PM
As much as I hate javascript for all sorts of reasons (not just security but the way it fucks with the back button in confusing ways, or down scrolling (what's up with how recently everything jumps around when downscrolling?)), I think it's just a lost cause. JS appeals to the design crowd and it is they who control what things look like. An apache directory listing would be faster and easier to deal with (just middleclick repeat), but for example in the cnet article, if you click a picture to see the full size, you get a modal which scales with your browser -- to actually see the full size image you have to right click view image on the scaled modal. Function takes a back seat to design on the web.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Sunday September 20 2015, @04:05AM
Worse, the damn thing insists on a browser it "knows". I had my hoary old SeaMonkey lie and call itself Chrome, and guess what! worked well enough.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 19 2015, @08:17PM
This picture: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-apluto-wide-9-17-15-final_0.png [nasa.gov]
It might be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. The amount of variety is amazing: even the atmosphere is full of detail. Artistically in interesting across several scales (No other of the original 9 planets has topology big enough to be interesting in such a view), and the overall portions are great. And the semantics of the image: the fact that this is Pluto, that we managed to get this picture, is mind blowing. There is so much mystery, and so much information. I'm so glad I got to see this: thanks so much to everyone throughout history, and this in the present, who made this possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @01:55AM
What are those 5 vertical streaks of light - 3 to the right and 2 to the left - surface to air missiles?
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Sunday September 20 2015, @02:38AM
Background stars. If you look close enough, there is more in the background of the same length.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @06:03AM
This suggests the probe took a timed exposure (dim sun out there), and the probe was carefully aimed to keep the cameras on the same general spot of Pluto while moving. it's one fast probe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2015, @06:20AM
Wouldn't that be interesting if they could get a color version of this? I suspect there was too much on the itinerary to get good multi-filtered shots, but you never know. There's still a lot to download. Lots of good stuff still to come...