Even the photo from Hubble is not a straight photograph, it is a composite of many exposures over various times assembled by a computer program making a map of colour and brightness variations on the surface which was then mapped onto a sphere. The diameter of Pluto is so small seen from Earth that a single images shows basically no detail at all. Pluto does have a rotation period and the scientists managed to use that as an aid in reconstruction its surface features. Pluto is less than 3 pixels wide in the Hubble telescope. This is just enough information to tell there is some brightness variation on the surface. So a direct picture of Pluto would be a grid just 3x3 pixels wide, nine potential points of difference. Pluto has five moons, Charon, Nix, Hydra, P4 and P5 as they are currently named. (You have to watch out for P5, it has very important astrological significance.)
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : Hah, I realised that photo was a mock up two seconds after posting the link. Next time I watch the video first! But it's good that we have the mystery of a new planet to look forward to, it's been a long time since there was a discovery we could wonder over. I remember how the world stopped in its tracks when the Voyager pictures of Jupiter were published. It's good when something draws our attention away into space like that, gives a much needed sense of perspective. Maybe Pluto won't be so exciting but it will still be a glimpse into the universe we haven't had before. The last bit of science to get excited about was a hard task for everyone, the Higgs Boson was entirely conceptual to us average Joe's, the most amazing thing was the lengths they went to to find it at all! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote : New Horizons just crossed the orbit of Neptune. It then will go into hibernation for 99 days. The photo is a painting or a digital painting, an artist's rendition of what they think it will be like. Right now Neptune is imaged as just a few pixels, Pluto is just a single pixel. It's still 284 days away from closest approach. The colour of Pluto and some of its surface variations have been photographed by Hubble but the image is very blurry to say the most even with extensive computer processing. We have no idea yet what its surface features are like in any detail. Here is the Hubble image, currently the best we have until New Horizons passes Pluto about the middle of next year: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2010/02/image.jpg http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2010/02/image.jpg http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2010/02/image.jpg http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2010/02/image.jpg View on scienceblogs.com http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2010/02/image.jpg Preview by Yahoo This Hubble image of Pluto is technically equivalent to photographing an air gun BB from a distance of 9.4km, or an American quarter dollar coin from 51km. New Horizons will have to get pretty close to Pluto before it can image it better than this Hubble image. From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 2, 2014 5:31 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Welcome back Pluto! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <noozguru@...> wrote : Jyotish only uses the visible planets not the outer ones. I guess they'd have to, not knowing about the others. It's tropical astrology that wants not only to use Pluto but asteroids as well. That makes even less sense, nobody knows exactly what is out there so if you think a horoscope makes sense and then someone discovers something else you can't have been right in the first place. But I guess the ice people of Plutoria must want a vote on this. ;-) It must be up to our solar system brothers. Looks like we'll be doing a flyby real soon. That cool photo was taken by NASA's New Horizons probe, which is well on it's way. Travelling at one million miles a day it still has 8 months before closest approach! I look forward to that muchly: NASA'-s New Horizons Spacecraft Near Pluto | Alternative http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/01/nasa-s-new-horizons-spacecraft-near-pluto-2878650.html http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/01/nasa-s-new-horizons-spacecraft-near-pluto-2878650.html NASA'-s New Horizons Spacecraft Near Pluto | Alt... http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/01/nasa-s-new-horizons-spacecraft-near-pluto-2878650.html One of the fastest spacecraft ever built, NASA´s New Horizons, is hurtling through the void at nearly one million miles per day. Launched in 2006, it has been in fl... View on beforeitsnews.com http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2014/01/nasa-s-new-horizons-spacecraft-near-pluto-2878650.html Preview by Yahoo On 10/02/2014 07:33 AM, salyavin808 wrote: Must be a frustrating time to be an astrologer, they just get used to pretending they have some sort of psychological and predictive use for poor old Pluto - after all those centuries not knowing about it - when the astronomical world decide it was never a planet at all! But now it's back so we can start taking note of the effects it's having on us again. Is Pluto about to be reinstated as a planet?
