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Phys.org has just published a story, Pluto extreme close-up best yet:
These images, which were taken while the New Horizon's probe was still 15,850 km (9,850 mi) away from Pluto (just 23 minutes before it made its closest approach), extend across the hemisphere that the probe was facing as it flew past. It shows features ranging from the cratered northern uplands and the mountainous regions in Voyager Terra before slicing through the flatlands of "Pluto's Heart" – aka. Tombaugh Regio – and ending up in another stretch of rugged highlands.
The width of the strip varies as the images pass from north to south, from more than 90 km (55 mi) across at the northern end to about 75 km (45 mi) at its southern point. The perspective also changes, with the view appearing virtually horizontal at the northern end and then shifting to an almost top-down view onto the surface by the end.
The crystal clear photographs that make up the mosaic – which have a resolution of about 80 meters (260 feet) per pixel – offer the most detailed view of Pluto's surface ever. With this kind of clarity, NASA scientists are able to discern features that were never before visible, and learn things about the kinds of geological processes which formed them.
This includes the chaotic nature of the mountains in the northern hemisphere, and the varied nature of the icy nitrogen plains across Tombaugh Regio – which go from being cellular, to non-cellular, to a cross-bedding pattern. These features are a further indication that Pluto's surface is the product of a combination of geological forces, such as cryovolcanism, sublimation, geological activity, convection between water and nitrogen ice, and interaction between the surface and atmosphere.
[...] The most distant flyby in the history of space exploration, and yet we've obtained more from this one mission than multiple flybys were able to provide from one of Earth's closest neighbors. Fascinating! And what's more, new information is expected to be coming from the New Horizons probe until this coming October. To top it off, our scientists are still not finished analyzing all the information the mission collected during its flyby.
(Alan Stern, the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission and the Associate Vice President of Research and Development at the Southwest Research Institute)
On July 14, 2015, at 11:49 UTC, the New Horizons space craft made its closest approach of 12,500 km (7,800 mi) above the surface of Pluto with a relative velocity of 13.78 km/s (49,600 km/h; 30,800 mph). This transpired at a distance of 4.5 light-hours from Earth, i.e. approximately 4.8×1012km away.
Direct link to the eye candy image and a silent, but annotated, video of the fly by identifying characteristics of each region.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday June 01 2016, @12:11AM
From the article: "... Pluto is actually more planet-like than previously thought."
I keep thinking the IAU should have waited for New Horizons data before making a final decision. Why did they rush to demote Pluto? They knew New Horizons was en route when they decided on demotion. What was the hurry? Really dumb to make a decision without facts, particularly when so many new facts of far higher quality were coming soon. And also it would have been simply courteous to delay the decision until the first probe sent there, and quite possibly the only one for the next 50 years, had given us a good look. Was this a slap in the face to America, Pluto being the one planet discovered by an American, and the IAU in an especially anti-American mood at the time? Or, was it a diabolically clever publicity stunt to stir up interest in Pluto by being mean about it, sort of like Coke stirring up more interest in the old drink when they introduced New Coke?
I think the clearest, simplest criteria for a planet is that it should be round, not irregular. Its mass should be enough for it to deform into a round shape, but not so great that it can support nuclear fusion, as that would make it a star. This would bring Ceres back into the fold. Orbiting a star is a more dubious requirement, as there can be "rogue" planets that do not orbit any star, instead orbiting about the center of mass of the galaxy. Such being the case, the requirement that a body clear its orbit to be a planet would be ridiculous for one with a circa 250 million year long orbit about a galaxy. Pluto points up another problem with the orbital clearing requirement, that being that they have to make an exception to that rule for a double planet. Heck, if the Moon was just a little bigger, Earth and the Moon would be a double planet.
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday June 01 2016, @04:41AM
My guess is that some astronomer bet some other astronomer they could destroy the Earth [qntm.org]
If you check on the International Earth-Destruction Advisory Board [qntm.org] page, you find:
Strangely, that does not correspond to the year the definition of planet changed [iau.org] (2006), so I could be wrong.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday June 01 2016, @12:33PM
Why did they rush to demote Pluto?
Seems to be a clash between two equally irrational arguments - "Waah! but Pluto has always been a planet!" vs. "Nooo... we don't want Ceres, Eros and who knows how many other lumps of rock to be counted as planets!" - in which both sides seem to be inventing arbitrary rules specifically to include/exclude their favourite celestial bodies. Frankly, its starting to border on astrology - or, at least, pre-Darwinian zoology...
The boring, rational attitude is to realise that as long as "planet" still covers everything from Mercury to newly discovered super-Jovian exoplanets, it is never going to be a particularly useful system of classification and you're going to need to invent some notation like "a type X-CZ/31b/RC92 body" if you want to concisely convey useful information about composition and orbit. "Planet" can be handed over to the safe keeping of colloquial English and used for anything planety-looking.
When you've gone from "appears to move against the background of fixed stars" to "has cleared its orbit" its probably time to reboot your classification system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 01 2016, @04:03PM
It wasn't a clash of arguments, like most things, it was a clash of egos. And some of the "winners" have been promoting themselves (such as Brown or Tyson) these last 10 years as scientific rebels, proudly proclaiming they "killed Pluto". If Pluto stayed a planet, they wouldn't be known as cool upstarts, just regular astronomers or astrophysicists.
The whole process involved in the IAU decision was a farce [space.com], and the method it occurred was disappointing [bbc.co.uk]:
You are correct that this was rushed through. Only those physically present at the meeting were allowed to vote, so this much ballyhooed "The IAU has decided" really meant that about 200 out of 10,000 IAU members had decided.
The irony is that if this new mysterious planet is discovered (the one where Brown is out there championing himself as the savior of the 9-planet system!), this being the hypothesized Earth-sized one in an elliptical orbit, well this one can't be a planet after all because one of the criteria Brown and others pushed forward to rule out Pluto is that it has a "near-circular" orbit, which this hypothesized new body doesn't. I wonder what we'll do with that one? (I'm sure some will want to just gerrymander the definition to make "near-circular" to be "no more elliptic than this one").