posted by
janrinok
on Wednesday July 15 2015, @06:22AM
from the amazingly-assonant-aliteration dept.
from the amazingly-assonant-aliteration dept.
As of this morning, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has flown by Pluto. Early images (here and here) are the best glimpses we have had of the dwarf planet. More detailed pictures are expected to be released this afternoon and over the next 16 months.
Update: New Horizons is expected to call home at 8:53 PM EDT.
Update: Contact with New Horizons re-established! Telemetry download has begun.
Update: New Horizons team unveils its first findings from the Pluto flypast – that briefing is on Wednesday at 3pm ET [sic] (8pm BST/Thursday 5am AEST) [updated at 14:59 UTC 15 July]
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Pluto Pictures Perfectly Pulchritudinous - UPDATE
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(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @01:35PM
Pulchritudinous
Put the thesaurus down and back away from it slowly.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @01:41PM
Pulchritudinous is a perfectly cromulent word.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @05:29PM
So you're saying the cromulentitudinosity of "pulchritudinous" is perfect?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:01PM
Especially since they just could have used "Pretty" and maintained the alliteration.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:19PM
Well it is pretty pulchritudinous.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:25PM
Put it down? I croodle with mine, you insensitive clod!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2015, @08:38PM
Am I the only one who had to look it up just to see how to even pronounce it?
(Score: 5, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday July 14 2015, @01:39PM
Alliterative Acronyms Are Always Awful, Avoid And Abstain As Appropriate.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:45PM
Slashdot story submitter sounds sufficiently supercilious, spewing smug sentences.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday July 15 2015, @03:04AM
They should attend Alliterative Acronyms Anonymous, which also offers free towing.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @01:58PM
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:02PM
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:46PM
Thanks, I see that now. Please add in links to the images as they are released.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:25PM
s/t
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday July 14 2015, @02:52PM
Not sure if this will display for you but here is the twitter picture: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJ4CQIkVEAEaAnw.png:large [twimg.com]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @07:54PM
Thanks
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:21PM
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NH-Pluto-color-NewHorizons-20150714.png [wikimedia.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 15 2015, @11:52AM
Thats the famous last pic from before the flyby, not actual flyby pic.
Its interesting that in mass media generally all reports contain only pre-flyby pics in stories about the flyby.
I want to see the flyby pics, they'll be much higher resolution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @03:09PM
Alliterations are already approaching absolute anachronisticity!
Or to say it in plain non-alliterative English: Alliterations are really getting old.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday July 14 2015, @04:07PM
This stamp [wikipedia.org] looks suspiciously similar to our new reference images of Pluto. Coincidence, or alien conspiracy?
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(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday July 14 2015, @05:27PM
Alien conspiracy, obviously. We need to nuke Pluto before it's too late!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 14 2015, @09:41PM
IT WAS PLANNED... [bbci.co.uk]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday July 14 2015, @09:29PM
I was worried with the recent problems. Years of effort and travel time could have been burned up, but it worked at the right time and that is good.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2015, @10:00PM
http://what-if.xkcd.com/137/ [xkcd.com]
XKCD What-If returned today with a car analogy, timed to match the flyby.
Randall shows that he hasn't lost his flair for good timing...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by No Respect on Tuesday July 14 2015, @10:01PM
It will take 16 months to retrieve all the data from NH but at the end of the mission, how many closeup images will we have at high resolution? The spacecraft is moving very fast and has a limited amount of time to acquire imagery from the closest distances. I don't think the onboard cameras are recording at 30 fps, for instance, but I'm not sure what their technical capabilities are.
The picture taken yesterday and released this morning is stunning, but to put it into size-and-distance perspective, it was like taking a picture of our moon from the earth... if the moon was half it's actual size and twice as far away. It's not as if the camera was right on top of Pluto in that picture. Which goes back to my original ruminations on how many photos will be captured, and at what distances.
Looking forward to the phone-home signal in a few hours. Without that then what we already have will be as good as it gets. Which is still tremendous.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Thursday July 16 2015, @10:45PM
How Many images?
I looked at the detailed timeline at: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/The-Flyby.php [jhuapl.edu] and found three kinds of entries:
I assume that 'taking an image' means exactly that: one image. Similarly, if it says it is taking, say, 12 images, then that means 12 images. Lastly, I tallied how many 'is taking images' statements I found.
Note: the timeline runs from 20150707_000207 through 20150720_124000 EDT or a period of 14 days. Obviously, some images were taken prior to this, and one can reasonably assume there would be some more following this period as well.
Here is the breakdown for the enumerated image counts; '169 2' means there were 169 places where 'is taking 2 images' was encountered; similarly '2 180' means there were 2 places where 'is taking 180 images' was encountered.
I calculated 2022 expressly enumerated images. Add to that 62 statements of 'taking images from...' which, since it is plural, suggests that there were at least 124 more images, giving no less than 2146 images. My guess is that it would be on the order of 2500 total images.
and at what distances?
Well, ummm, lots of distances! =) But seriously, there is no simple answer to that question. best I can do is to suggest you take a look at the data from that page. As for relatively close-up activities (including images), here is a subset of that data from 1 hour before to 1 hour after the closest approach:
From the above data, it appears the highest resolution images are 'at est. resolution of 0.076 km/pix' — in other words, each pixel works out to just under 250 feet per pixel.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday July 15 2015, @03:14AM
New Horizon *did* report hack, at 8:52:37 PM Eastern time.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by No Respect on Wednesday July 15 2015, @07:43AM
Did you watch the press conference too? That was the answer to the last question asked which I appreciated since they had been saying 8:53 PM EDT and, by my clock, the signal was late. I'm chalking it up to internet latency on the broadcast. I loved Alice Bowman reminding everyone there to, "Tell your children about this." It was a most excellent day.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Alfred on Wednesday July 15 2015, @06:12PM
For deep and interesting analysis of course.