# New Horizons to flyby Pluto this year



## Brian G Turner

Was looking up information on this previously, as it'll be exciting to finally see proper colour photographs of Pluto, despite it's demotion to dwarf planet a few years ago - in the meantime, the BBC has an introductory piece today about the New Horizons mission:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30954673

Will be also interesting to see images of Charon, and possibly other Kuiper Belt objects - normally these missions lead to surprises.


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## Ray McCarthy

"Wait, that's not a Dwarf Planet ..."


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## kythe

I am always amazed by how incredibly vast space is.  This probe has been en route for 9 years and is only 6 months away.  Yet even now Pluto only appears to the probe as a bright spot in the sky.


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## Venusian Broon

kythe said:


> I am always amazed by how incredibly vast space is.  This probe has been en route for 9 years and is only 6 months away.  Yet even now Pluto only appears to the probe as a bright spot in the sky.



Yeah, all a bit mind bending these sort of distances - of course the light conditions aren't helping, the sun being just a bit bigger than the nearby stars:




 

But even the ~4-7 billion km that Pluto lives in is (at most) only about ~1.7% of the distance to the closest star. As stated in the Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy: _"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..."_


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## Ray McCarthy

The Oort Cloud's limit is about 1000x further away than Pluto (at it's furthest) and it's associated with our Solar System. Of course these probes take a long while as they are mostly coasting with the occasional planetary slingshot.

Pluto is only about 4 light hours away, with 0.5G Acceleration its maybe a month or two flight time...  "Deep Space" is probably 10 to 20 light days away (still FAR nearer than Oort Cloud). The Milky Way, our Galaxy is about  100,000LY across, about 876,600,000 Light Hours, or about 220 Million times more  than Earth - Pluto distance, though Pluto is a very eccentric orbit from near the Kuiper Belt to inside orbit of Neptune.




Via space.com Image by NASA


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## Brian G Turner

We have blobs!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31144138

And need to wait until at least May until we get images better than the Hubble Telescope's - somewhat poor - ones.


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## Stephen Palmer

Pretty amazing blobs, though.


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## Perpetual Man

Back in 2006 the New Horizons probe left Earth on a slow journey that would take it through the Solar System and out the other side, ultimately providing the closest and most dramatic pictures of Pluto yet seen.

It has been an epic journey for the little craft, but it is coming toward the end of it's mission and we are starting to see photos coming back of the former planet, now dwarf planet or planetoid.

The next two weeks starting from the 16th June should deliver some of the most exciting pictures ever seen from the edge of the solar system.

New Horizons - Pluto


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## Ray McCarthy

One of the initial images has a part that looks very like Africa!

http://xkcd.com/1532/


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## mosaix

Shame it's a flyby and not going into orbit. Lets hope all the instruments operate as planned.


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## mosaix

Puzzling 'spots' spotted by the New Horizons probe.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33369045

_Each spot is about 500km across. Quite why they should be so similar in size and spacing is not clear. 

Their dominant placing is on the hemisphere that New Horizons will not see during its close flyby on 14 July.

However, there should be ample opportunity to study them in the days leading up to the encounter.

“It’s a real puzzle - we don’t know what the spots are, and we can’t wait to find out,” said New Horizons principal investigator, Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute._


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## Brian G Turner

This also reminds of the Shoemaker-Levy scars left in Jupiter's atmosphere - impact craters from a fragmented planetoid, asteroid, or even pieces of a comet...


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## BAYLOR

Interesting pictures , looks pretty desolate from this distance , Probably not much of anything to find there . No air, no tectonic activity , likely a dead ball of rock and ice.  I don't think we'll ever see any kind of a manned mission to Pluto.


On a silly, note I see no evidence of a Gamellon Base.


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## Parson

I think those four spots are the thrusters.


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## BigBadBob141

I tend to think of Pluto as a full blown planet simply because it has a satellite "Charon".
I was a bit annoyed when it got demoted.
However talking of which does anyone know any of the larger asteroids have satellites?


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## Vertigo

BigBadBob141 said:


> I tend to think of Pluto as a full blown planet simply because it has a satellite "Charon".
> I was a bit annoyed when it got demoted.
> However talking of which does anyone know any of the larger asteroids have satellites?


Loads of them it seems: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/astmoontable.html

I was annoyed at the demotion just because I'd grown up with it as a planet. However it does make sense as we now know of a number of other objects that are bigger than Pluto and orbiting the Sun rather than another object, so it either had to be demoted or a lot of other objects promoted. A line had to be drawn somewhere.


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## BigBadBob141

REF:Vertigo
Thanks for the reply, I suppose it does make sense, Astronomy has gone forwards leaps and bounds since I became interested back in the early 70s.
I had a 3" Tasco refractor and loved to look at the half-Moon, the rings of Saturn or Sun spots projected on a screen for safety.
I'm a bit out of touch with it all, must start reading Sky & Telescope again.
I don't think I have ever come across an SF story in which an asteroid has a natural satellite?
P.S. Thanks for the link!


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## Brian G Turner

Getting closer:


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## BAYLOR

Brian Turner said:


> Getting closer:




Great photo .


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## mosaix

From 8million km.






http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33459476

_New Horizons has acquired yet another stunning view of Pluto.

The US space agency probe captured the latest image on Tuesday when it was just under eight million km from the dwarf world.

As of Thursday, New Horizons had moved to within six million km, heading for its historic flyby next week.

The new picture was the first to be returned following the computer hiccup at the weekend that saw the probe briefly drop communications with Earth.

The face of Pluto seen in the image is broadly that which will be examined in detail on 14 July.

It includes a large dark region near Pluto's equator, dubbed "the whale", and a roughly heart-shaped bright area spanning 2,000km._


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## Brian G Turner

Well, today's the day of the flyby - but according to the New Horizons website, there won't be contact with earth until after midnight - so we'll probably not see the pictures until tomorrow.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

In the meantime, apparently Pluto is slightly bigger than originally thought:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150713

And here's the BBC reporting on today's historic event
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33517532

and the latest colour compositions for Pluto and Charon:


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## Dave

*Breaking News: NASA have just released the first picture of Pluto. And guess what, that's no Moon!*


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## Curt Chiarelli

Dave said:


> View attachment 24027
> 
> *Breaking News: NASA have just released the first picture of Pluto. And guess what, that's no Moon!*



Dave, has anyone ever told you that you upset people at their breakfast?


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## Curt Chiarelli

Brian Turner said:


> Well, today's the day of the flyby - but according to the New Horizons website, there won't be contact with earth until after midnight - so we'll probably not see the pictures until tomorrow.
> http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
> 
> In the meantime, apparently Pluto is slightly bigger than originally thought:
> http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150713
> 
> And here's the BBC reporting on today's historic event
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33517532
> 
> and the latest colour compositions for Pluto and Charon:




Yes! The new images coming in from Pluto (or, for all you Lovecraftians out there in the audient void of cyberspace, the planet Yuggoth) are already showing distinct and uniquely odd geological features. This is so neat!


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## Venusian Broon

Curt Chiarelli said:


> Dave, has anyone ever told you that you upset people at their breakfast?



Yes I had a strange feeling this morning, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.


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## BigBadBob141

REFave
Nice one.
LOL.


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## BAYLOR

Dave said:


> View attachment 24027
> 
> *Breaking News: NASA have just released the first picture of Pluto. And guess what, that's no Moon!*




Quick,  someone get a message to Like Skywalker.


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## Dave

I'm not the only one that thought of that similarity independently but that huge circular crater-like feature does look like a spaceport. There are some features to the right and below it that New Scientist thinks are possible cliffs, but why not "housing developments"? There is a bright "heart" rotating into view that is obviously a major city, while the dark patch rotating into view just below it will be their main agricultural region.

More seriously, none of these "features" were expected to be found.


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## Vertigo

The latest picture. Phenomenal detail. Can't wait to see the pictures from the fly past itself. Picture from this report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33524589







Incidentally I love that they have included on board New Horizons some of the ashes of the original discoverer of Pluto - Clyde Tombaugh. A really nice touch.


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## Ray McCarthy

El Reg Article
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/14/pluto_new_horizons_science/

(I think the Beeb can often be shallow and inaccurate in recent years)


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## Ray McCarthy

Randall Monroe who does XKCD worked in NASA till XKCD was making him more money. His previous "what if" book was fun "science". I was given it as a present.

Analysis of the pre-flyby image (hover mouse on image)
http://xkcd.com/1551/


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## Dave

People are also comparing the "heart" shape to the head of Mickey Mouse's dog, Pluto. Our brains are hardwired to find faces and patterns in things, so much so that we see them when they don't actually exist. That's the reason we see the Jesus Toast and the Hitler House.

It certainly looks like Pluto has been around the block a few times. It doesn't look like an object that was woken up from sleep in the Kuiper Belt but more like one that was used to shoot pool among the outer planets.


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## Ray McCarthy

Another BBC article
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33537276

Yes The Register has an Animated "Big foot" and a pluto dog on another article.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/15/bigfoot_found_on_pluto/


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## Ray McCarthy

Another Beeb Article
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150715-why-reaching-pluto-is-so-amazing


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## Serendipity

eek... with the latest news of what they've discovered about Pluto... it has all sorts of implications that are going to make a difference to what we understand about icy moons like Triton and Miranda... still nice to know all the stories I've been writing about these icy worlds are turning out to be near the reality mark... eek... excitement...


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## Ray McCarthy

And an hour ago NASA released the first flyby images.
It will take about another month to send back all the data captured at flyby time. Link is only 1K bps to 4 K bps speed. (What I had for dialup in 1982, by 1994 I think I had 33K and by 1998 128K ISDN, today my daughter has 200,000K data connection).

New images Pluto and Charon:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33543383



> Chief scientist Alan Stern said the new pictures showed evidence of geological activity and mountains in the Pluto system.
> ...  the first close-up image of Pluto's surface showed a terrain that had been resurfaced by some geological process - such as volcanism - within the last 100 million years.
> "We have not found a single impact crater on this image. This means it must be a very young surface," he said.
> This active geology needs some source of heat. Previously, such activity has only been seen on icy moons, where it can be explained by "tidal heating" caused by gravitational interactions with a large host planet.





> A new, close-up image of the dwarf planet's giant moon Charon has revealed a chasm 4-6 miles deep, as well as further evidence of active resurfacing.
> Significantly, all these images are at a much higher resolution than anything we have seen so far.
> The mission team has told New Horizons this week to send down only a small fraction of the total data it carries.
> Part of the reason is that the probe continues to do science, observing Pluto from its night side.
> The intention is to keep looking at it for about two more full rotations, or 12 Earth days.



NASA webpage on Pluto
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/f...veries-from-nasa-s-new-horizons-pluto-mission


> Icy mountains on Pluto and a new, crisp view of its largest moon, Charon, are among the several discoveries announced Wednesday by the NASA's New Horizons team, just one day after the spacecraft’s first ever Pluto flyby.
> 
> "Pluto New Horizons is a true mission of exploration showing us why basic scientific research is so important," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The mission has had nine years to build expectations about what we would see during closest approach to Pluto and Charon. Today, we get the first sampling of the scientific treasure collected during those critical moments, and I can tell you it dramatically surpasses those high expectations."
> 
> “Home run!” said Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “New Horizons is returning amazing results already. The data look absolutely gorgeous, and Pluto and Charon are just mind blowing."
> 
> A new close-up image of an equatorial region near the base of Pluto’s bright heart-shaped feature shows a mountain range with peaks jutting as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body.


Images of Pluto through the years (link to info on Hydra too)


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## Parson

Thanks Ray, Those are cool shots and good insights.


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## Ray McCarthy

More coverage and Lovecraft Honoured.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/15/pluto_hi_res_pictures_latest_new_horizons/


> The image of Charon sent back shows a large dark spot near the north pole, which the team has dubbed Mordor. The patch is surrounded by an uneven spread of reddish material, but more instrument readings are needed before the boffins know what it is.


Not yet an official name I think.

Presumably the geological activity is partly fuelled by tidal energy due to the close binary orbit?


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## thaddeus6th

Can't remember where I saw it, but there was a great comparison of best Pluto pics. In May, it was a fuzzy collection of about 8 pixels. And now we've got a proper 'global' picture and more detailed ones coming in.


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## hardsciencefanagain

I heard someone say(think it was Govert Schilling)that by now "we have the solar system pretty well covered" .
yeah right
The Solar System is much like a spacious broom closet,it's reasonably small,and on an afternooon stroll,you can reconnoiter the whole place.
Curt,good to see ya


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## Vertigo

My understanding is that it is going to take 16 months to download all the data rather than one month.

I think the most extraordinary thing is not the 'young' surface of Pluto, but rather the 'young' surface of Charon, suggesting that not just Pluto but also the smaller Charon is also geologically active. I wonder if it might have something to do with the relatives sizes of Pluto and Charon being quite close; Charon is slightly more than half the diameter of Pluto whilst all the moons of other planets in the solar system are relatively much smaller than their 'parent.' And they are also extremely close together; a mere 19,570 km compared to the moon at 384,400 km from Earth. On the other hand, as Pluto and Charon are both tidally locked and I don't think there's much variation in their separation, there shouldn't be much in the way of tidal forces at work. Curious...

Certainly going to give the geologists something to think about.


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## hardsciencefanagain

the lowdown....or some of it
http://hubblesite.org/pubinfo/pdf/2015/24/pdf.pdf

http://www.lesia.obspm.fr/perso/bruno-sicardy/charon/results/Nature_Sicardy_etal.pdf
http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-3881/144/1/15/pdf/1538-3881_144_1_15.pdf
http://authors.library.caltech.edu/1476/1/BROareps02.pdf
http://www.sc.eso.org/~cdumas/dum01.pdf
https://www-n.oca.eu/morby/papers/P146.pdf
https://www.astro.umd.edu/~dphamil/research/reprints/RhoHenHur15.pdf
http://inspirehep.net/record/1115758/files/arXiv:1205.5273.pdf


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## Vertigo

It is interesting that we are really looking at a binary planet rather than a planet, albeit a dwarf one, with a moon. Strictly speaking Pluto and Charon are a binary planet with other moons circling around the pair of them.

Sadly @hardsciencefanagain, fascinating though those links are, I'm afraid they are way over the top for a layman like myself  I can just about cope with their summary, introductory paragraphs!

Edit: on more reading it seems the scientists think that, though close, Pluto and Charon are too small for tidal forces between them to be causing geological activity and they are now speculating on radioactivity generating heat or even underground lakes. Though I can't see why the latter would retain heat any more than the body of the planet.


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## hardsciencefanagain

I'm a layman,but reasonably well informed.
I learned to read articles like that,so my science is always sort of "straight from the horse's mouth"
I started out with Scientific American,American Scientist and progressed naturally to articles from the technical journals.Stick at it,and sooner or later the dime drops,so to speak.


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## Ray McCarthy

Vertigo said:


> Pluto and Charon are too small for tidal forces between them to be causing geological activity and they are now speculating on radioactivity generating heat or even underground lakes.


Interesting.
So really they don't know yet.


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## Vertigo

Absolutely not. This one image that they've already received has no crater impacts on it meaning they estimate the surface cannot be older than 100 million years. A mere clock tick in geological times. They are apparently gobsmacked having expected a heavily cratered surface:



> Alan Stern, the mission's chief scientist commented: "We now have an isolated, small planet that's showing activity after 4.5 billion years."
> 
> Prof Stern said the discovery would "send a lot of geophysicists back to the drawing boards".



I love that: a lot of head scratching going to be going on I think!


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## hardsciencefanagain

Earth's early impact record is rather obscure,most craters have disappeared.
But:this because of geological activity
Might there be less reason for impact at the edge of the solar system?


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## Vertigo

I'm not sure, they've got the Kuiper belt to deal with and there are some craters on Charon, just very few. They seem pretty certain that the surface is 'young.' Compare it with the moon, rather than Earth, and then bear in mind that it is smaller than the moon.


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## Ray McCarthy

hardsciencefanagain said:


> Might there be less reason for impact at the edge of the solar system?


No.
Nor does Pluto stay at the Edge of the Solar system. The lack of craters is because of geological activity. So now the puzzle is what is causing it. 

Pluto and its moons have a very strange orbit. If anything, I'd have thought it would make is more vulnerable to other Kupier Belt objects, other objects in closer orbits and bits of comet or other stuff in Solar orbit.


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## hardsciencefanagain

So there must be high heat flow.Interesting.
Might mean better convective flow,or more radioactive elements.


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## Parson

I'm with *Vertigo *about being a layman for those articles. The math and even the symbology are beyond me. But  I believe I can answer this question.



hardsciencefanagain said:


> Might there be less reason for impact at the edge of the solar system?



If I am right the answer goes in the opposite direction. Having Saturn and especially Jupiter in the outer orbits of the sun has significantly decreased the number of hits the earth takes. Being outside of their orbit as Pluto (are we going to start saying Pluto/Charon?) is that would increase the statistical probability of hits, not decrease them.


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## hardsciencefanagain

hey,most important thing:I'm learning here,and we're interacting on a mightyly interesting topic


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## Vertigo

And bear in mind that Pluto and Charon themselves are now thought to have collided with each other and stayed locked together as the binary, rather than Charon being a chunk of Pluto knocked off by a collision with another body. And as Ray says, it does have an odd orbit where it is sometimes closer to the Sun than Neptune. They seem to think it used to be in a much closer orbit but got spun out by the gas giant bullies


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## hardsciencefanagain

I like that
*jumps up and down on "like" button*
Gas Bully
*retrieves accretion disk thrown around by all and sundry*


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## Parson

Vertigo said:


> And bear in mind that Pluto and Charon themselves are now thought to have collided with each other and stayed locked together as the binary, rather than Charon being a chunk of Pluto knocked off by a collision with another body. And as Ray says, it does have an odd orbit where it is sometimes closer to the Sun than Neptune. They seem to think it used to be in a much closer orbit but got spun out by the gas giant bullies



This is all new information for me. Especially the part about being spun out of a nearer orbit by the gas giant bullies.


Edit: I did know about the eccentric orbit part.


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## Vertigo

Check this out: 




It's part of a series of 'Pluto in a minute' videos that Nasa have released to YouTube. They're actually quite good, though the presenter is a little frantic, but then she is trying to cram a lot into each minute.

And from Wiki:


> Simulation work published in 2005 by Robin Canup suggested that Charon could have been formed by a collision around 4.5 billion years ago, much like Earth and the Moon. In this model, a large Kuiper belt object struck Pluto at high velocity, destroying itself and blasting off much of Pluto's outer mantle, and Charon coalesced from the debris.[29] However, such an impact should result in an icier Charon and rockier Pluto than scientists have found. It is now thought that Pluto and Charon may have been two bodies that collided before going into orbit about each other. The collision would have been violent enough to boil off volatile ices like methane but not violent enough to have destroyed either body.


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## hardsciencefanagain

The physics of celestial collisions* are not well constrained yet
err
*no pun intended
you just gotta love the exploration of space.
*fondly remembers Ley/Bonestell*


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## Ray McCarthy

More historic Solar System pics
http://www.theguardian.com/science/...-and-other-historic-first-pictures-of-planets


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## Serendipity

Oh groanations... Pluto has a very eccentric orbit around the Sun, which means its more volatile ices could slough off which would to a certain extent de-crater the surface. Don't forget the Pluto has just passed its closest approach to the Sun.

But whilst this would be a contributory factor to the new-ish surface, it is far from being the whole story. Yes there is a little bit of tidal heating, but not to make a new surface like that.

Radioactive materials producing heat? Possible, but unlikely because radioactive materials are usually the heavy elements whose atoms and molecules would have stayed close to the Sun when the Solar System was developing.

So the normal causes of a new geological surface do not explain the surface.

So how about a recent collision with Charon? This explanation would also go to explain the newish surface on Charon.

But there are two other possible explanations...

1) The sloughing off of material could be re-gathered onto the surface of Pluto and its moon to smooth things out and if you include icebergs being sloughed off and brought back to a semi-liquid surface, this could explain the 'cryo-volcanic' features we are seeing
2) Pluto was formed far away from the Sun. We can't say for certain what its internal structures are like, but I would not be surprised if they were so weak that they effectively suffer from a form of tidal heating, but not as we know it.

On the second point... fingers crossed that a certain editor accepts my latest science fiction story. Whilst not located on or around Pluto, it does give some insight in the possible processes.

Right... that's the end of my rant... for now...


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## Vertigo

Yes, highly eccentric orbit but it's closest point to the Sun is only just inside the orbit of Neptune, I wouldn't have thought that was close enough for significant sublimation, but I may be wrong. And it's thought that it wasn't formed nearly as far out as it is now (see my #56 above)


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## Ray McCarthy

Serendipity said:


> Don't forget the Pluto has just passed its closest approach to the Sun.


1985.
The "Rockies" sized mountains are likely water ice. That will not have melted.


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## Serendipity

Vertigo said:


> Yes, highly eccentric orbit but it's closest point to the Sun is only just inside the orbit of Neptune, I wouldn't have thought that was close enough for significant sublimation, but I may be wrong. And it's thought that it wasn't formed nearly as far out as it is now (see my #56 above)



The suggestion in the video is that Pluto could have formed as close 15 astronomical units from the Sun. This puts it beyond the current position of Saturn which is orbiting at c. 9.6 astronomical units. Which means that the temperature and gravitational regimes under which it developed were significantly different from Earth's. I'm far from convinced that that the scientists know all the formation mechanisms in this colder, darker and less gravity regime. Hence my suggestion that the structures may be less structurally rigid because they are less dense. It'll be interesting to see what the scientists come up with for an explanation in the end.


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## Venusian Broon

Serendipity said:


> I'm far from convinced that that the scientists know all the formation mechanisms in this colder, darker and less gravity regime.



As observations of increasing numbers of exoplanets in all sorts of very 'strange' positions that would have been unthinkable two decades ago - such as hot Jupiters, and systems where the planets seem to have totally forgotten about trying to keep to a sensible orbital plane -  I would suspect we barely know _anything_ about the formation mechanisms of planets


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## hardsciencefanagain

You're probably right,Veeb
John Chambers:_"the final stages of (planetary)accretion are probably dominated by chance events_(Earth and planetary Science Letters,vol.223,pages 241-252)


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## Serendipity

Ray McCarthy said:


> 1985.
> The "Rockies" sized mountains are likely water ice. That will not have melted.



Pluto has a 248 year orbit and hence passing closest to the Sun in 1989 (the correct date) is comparatively recently in its orbit. At least this is the implication I meant to give. 

Totally agree about the water ice remaining solid, but Pluto has a thin layer of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane covering a lot of the surface. New Horizons discovered that Pluto's nitrogen atmosphere was much farther out than expected. This could be due to some nitrogen 'steaming off'. Until the scientists have done their work, we won't really know the cause of this.


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## hardsciencefanagain

new techniques for dating the early solar system:dating small 182W* variations in iron meteorites
*tungsten isotope,but i can't do superscripts
_*tungsten istopes seem to be well-mixed in the Solar System(Osmium decay not probable,cosmic ray exposure effects can't be totally ruled out )
radioactive decay of 26Al most likely was the principle heat source for differentiation of early accreted planetary bodies*_
The interface between active
and dead zones in a protoplanetary disk may mark a transition from laminar behaviour to
turbulent behaviour, which may also affect the manner in which migration occurs , and density gradients at the interfacemay also contribute . Thus, there are _several potential mechanisms for_
_accumulating radially migrating material at specific radii._
(italics mine)


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## Vertigo

It's fascinating isn't it? It's a clear reminder about how much we don't yet know. Which, after all, is why we explore!

I hope the data still to come will prove sufficient to answer this question?

Incidentally on that latest hi res image it's not the 3000 m mountains that really fascinate me but the apparent huge depression just below them. Hard to tell but it looks like it could swallow several of those mountains whole.


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## Ray McCarthy

Tonight on BBC R4 they were saying OVER A YEAR to get back all the data. There is a Sky at Night Special on BBC mon 20th July 2015 I think.


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## BAYLOR

It's too bad they couldn't have landed mobile explorer like Pathfinder on The surface of Pluto, just to see what  the terrain is like.


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## Ray McCarthy

Serendipity said:


> Pluto has a 248 year orbit and hence passing closest to the Sun in 1989 (the correct date)


Just as well I'm not programming New Horizons. I was 1.61% out!

So a 21 year old Plutonian would be over 5200 Earth years old


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## Ray McCarthy

BAYLOR said:


> It's too bad they couldn't have landed mobile explorer


Tricky considering they couldn't even Orbit


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## BAYLOR

Ray McCarthy said:


> Just as well I'm not programming New Horizons. I was 1.61% out!
> 
> So a 21 year old Plutonian would be over 5200 Earth years old




Old enough to drink.


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## BAYLOR

Ray McCarthy said:


> Tricky considering they couldn't even Orbit




Maybe they'll be able to do that in another 20 or so years?


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## Ray McCarthy

We could probably do it now. But horribly expensive.


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## BAYLOR

Ray McCarthy said:


> We could probably do it now. But horribly expensive.



I think in this case , It might worth the expense.  It looks quite different from both the Moon and Mars and other bodies in the system.


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## Ray McCarthy

Perhaps. But likely the USA government prefers spending on other things. New Horizons was cost of about 3 fighter jets. What you'd like might be 100x more at a very rough guess.

Now if  the photos show an alien artefact I'd imagine the budget would be found.


----------



## BAYLOR

Ray McCarthy said:


> Perhaps. But likely the USA government prefers spending on other things. New Horizons was cost of about 3 fighter jets. What you'd like might be 100x more at a very rough guess.
> 
> Now if  the photos show an alien artefact I'd imagine the budget would be found.




That would start a brand new space race.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

/me starts hacking NASA  deep space traffic ...


----------



## Vertigo

Ray McCarthy said:


> Tonight on BBC R4 they were saying OVER A YEAR to get back all the data. There is a Sky at Night Special on BBC mon 20th July 2015 I think.


I6 to 18 months is what I've been reading; I think all the images we've been getting so far have been transmitted compressed, New Horizon still has all the raw images in its memory. And yes I'm looking forward to the sky at Night special.



BAYLOR said:


> I think in this case , It might worth the expense.  It looks quite different from both the Moon and Mars and other bodied in the system.


The problem here is that it has to be travelling incredibly fast to get there in a reasonable time and this is way too fast to be captured into orbit around such a small body. So they'd have to carry a lot of fuel to decelerate and that makes it harder to get it up to those speeds in the first place and so on. It would be massively expensive.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Vertigo said:


> It would be massively expensive.


Yes. Absolutely. But certainly possible. 
In theory, traversing that distance in a few months is possible, but not for us right now. Perhaps with fission powered ion drive we could do it in a little less than 10 years including deceleration and orbit.


----------



## Vertigo

Look how far we've come in the last 50 years, who knows what may come in the next 50.


----------



## BAYLOR

Vertigo said:


> Look how far we've come in the last 50 years, who knows what may come in the next 50.




In 50 years , we could well be on Mars.


----------



## Venusian Broon

Vertigo said:


> Look how far we've come in the last 50 years, who knows what may come in the next 50.



To be honest, not as far as I would have hoped. So one can only cross your fingers and hope we speed up a bit...


----------



## Ray McCarthy

At least we have real autonomous robots on Mars, they are not Waldos like bomb disposal and deep sea so called robots. The latency is too high, so they are given short approximate routes and tasks to attempt. Though mostly if there is a problem they simply stop and ask what to do.


----------



## Vertigo

I agree we could have hoped to be further, but it is still pretty remarkable how far we have come.


----------



## hardsciencefanagain

*hits like button*
Glass being half full attitude
I'm just glad Space exploration hasn't come to a complete standstill


----------



## Vertigo

Absolutely!


----------



## Brian G Turner

hardsciencefanagain said:


> *hits like button*



We do have a "like" button - look to the bottom right of each post: #postnumber *Like *+Quote Reply"


----------



## hardsciencefanagain

yeah,but when activated it results in "you like this",eg. post #85


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## Ray McCarthy

hardsciencefanagain said:


> but when activated it results in "you like this"


Why is that a problem if you want to endorse/agree with/have same sentiment/like the post?

Other people see the name of the person that clicked like.


----------



## Vertigo

What I see on post #85 is: "mosaix and hardsciencefanagain like this."

See it's smart


----------



## hardsciencefanagain

Weell,doesn't matter,this isn't facebook


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Fortunately!


----------



## Vertigo

New image from Charon released as a teaser really 


They seem a little excited by the feature in the top left of the image detail:



> The image shows an area approximately 240 miles (390 kilometers) from top to bottom, including few visible craters. “The most intriguing feature is a large mountain sitting in a moat,” said Jeff Moore with NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, who leads New Horizons’ Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team. “This is a feature that has geologists stunned and stumped.”



The depression reminds me of the depression (without a mountain in it) just below the ice mountains in the detailed image of Pluto.

The full image is here https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/charon-closeup2.jpg but from this you can see how heavily compressed it is and we'll have to wait for the uncompressed version!


----------



## hardsciencefanagain

I wonder about the geomorphology of the large feature slightly to the left and above the yellow square.It LOOKS continous


----------



## Serendipity

There has been an update on the surface composition of Pluto, which can be found here: http://space.io9.com/the-ice-of-pluto-is-more-diverse-than-we-realized-1717986243 

Basically to date (they've only got part of the data download) Pluto has an uneven methane ice distribution... to quote the reference: We just learned that in the north polar cap, methane ice is diluted in a thick, transparent slab of nitrogen ice...

Go imagine...


----------



## Twistedlemon

I wonder if the probe will find any standing water.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Twistedlemon said:


> any standing water


Apparently the 3000m (10,000ft) mountains are frozen water (regular ice). 
Any planet with frozen Nitrogen isn't going to have liquid water on the surface. That's -210C melting point!


----------



## Twistedlemon

It may be closer to the core, if there's any similarities between the anatomy  of the earth and other planets.


----------



## Brian G Turner

More data from Pluto, and continued mystery about Pluto's surface:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33570131

Those "polygons" remind me of sea ice at the North Pole. Obviously we shouldn't expect liquid water on Pluto, so which would be the next best contender to exist in solid/liquid form at the surface of Pluto? Methane, or nitrogen?


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Nitrogen

Though why Pluto should have the amount of Nitrogen it appears to have (as well as frozen Methane), may be odd too.


----------



## BAYLOR

Twistedlemon said:


> I wonder if the probe will find any standing water.



Pluto's over 3 Billion miles from the Sun.  At that distance  the surface temperature is about 300 or 400 below zero, there's no way you find any unfrozen water on the surface.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

BAYLOR said:


> 300 or 400 below zero


You must be on Fahrenheit?  Absolute Zero is a smidgen below -273 C
It sounds like a very cold place. That white Heart shape is likely colder than the dark Whale shape (assuming that's the part pointing at the sun). Though Pluto is rotating, I think it's poles  / axis are  pointing such that one side is mostly dark?


----------



## BAYLOR

Ray McCarthy said:


> You must be on Fahrenheit?  Absolute Zero is a smidgen below -273 C
> It sounds like a very cold place. That white Heart shape is likely colder than the dark Whale shape (assuming that's the part pointing at the sun). Though Pluto is rotating, I think it's poles  / axis are  pointing such that one side is mostly dark?



Now the big question , what's beyond Pluto? Another planet perhaps ?


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Lots of rocks, dwarf planets and comets.
Two families: Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud

If there is anything as larger than Pluto it must be far out. Lots of very small planets, but I don't think any have a prince and a rose.


> In 1950, Dutch astronomer Jan Oort proposed that certain comets come from a vast, extremely distant, spherical shell of icy bodies surrounding the solar system. This giant swarm of objects is now named the Oort Cloud, occupying space at a distance between 5,000 and 100,000 astronomical units.


The Oort Cloud is a THOUSAND times further away than Pluto at it's furthest from the sun, when it's in the Kuiper belt


> The Kuiper Belt is a disc-shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune -- billions of kilometres from our sun. Pluto and Eris are the best known of these icy worlds. There may be hundreds more of these ice dwarfs out there. The Kuiper Belt and even more distant Oort Cloud are believed to be the home of comets that orbit our sun. The best known resident of the Kuiper Belt is Pluto, but it also is home to Eris, Haumea, Makemake and countless comets.


http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs


----------



## Curt Chiarelli

Ray McCarthy said:


> More coverage and Lovecraft Honoured.
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/15/pluto_hi_res_pictures_latest_new_horizons/
> 
> Not yet an official name I think.



This news brings a tear to my eye! Shall we petition N.A.S.A. to make it official? Anyone here agree with me?


----------



## Ray McCarthy

More surprises!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/17/new_horizons_surface_of_pluto/


> One thing is clear: Sputnik Planum is relatively young. The lack of craters (of which there are plenty in other areas of Pluto) indicates the surface was formed as little as 100 million years ago – and in fact, Moore posited, it could have been formed last week for all we know.
> The plains have also revealed a series of features that look like wind-driven deposits. Moore speculated that they were complex hydrocarbons that had fallen from the sky and been blown into cervices on Pluto's surface, noting that similar features exist on Earth.
> The mountains to the south of Sputnik Planum have now been named the Norgay Mountains, in honor of Tenzing Norgay, the first Sherpa to reach the summit of Everest. It's the first time any feature in the Solar System has been named after a Nepalese citizen, Stern said.
> "I'm still having to remind myself to take deep breaths," he said. "This landscape is astoundingly amazing."





> The first surprise is that the dwarf planet's atmosphere extends much further from the surface than first thought – about 1,000 miles, to be exact. The upper part is nitrogen, with a lower band of methane and a thin band of complex hydrocarbons close to the surface.


----------



## hardsciencefanagain

Thanks,Ray.Can't be more up-to-date than this,I suppose.
Good pix,BTW


----------



## Serendipity

And the latest results / analysis that has come out shows that Pluto is shedding nitrogen atmosphere at the rate of 500 tons per hour, enough to produce a solar shock wave in the Solar wind... see http://gizmodo.com/plutos-atmosphere-is-billowing-away-into-space-1718582990


----------



## kythe

The biggest surprise to me was that Pluto has an atmosphere at all.  I thought atmosphere was related to gravity - the size of the object determines its ability to pull in lighter gasses.  Mercury and our moon are also small, and neither have an atmosphere, yet Pluto does.


----------



## Venusian Broon

kythe said:


> The biggest surprise to me was that Pluto has an atmosphere at all.  I thought atmosphere was related to gravity - the size of the object determines its ability to pull in lighter gasses.  Mercury and our moon are also small, and neither have an atmosphere, yet Pluto does.



On a first guess - Mercury and the Moon are much hotter, being relatively close to the sun - so they will have been baking for billions of years and will have lost much volatile material (higher temp = higher average kinetic speeds of gas molecules = greater chance of these molecules finding escape velocity). Also the effect of the solar wind will be much stronger closer in - which easily strips away atmospheres if they are not protected with magnetic fields.


----------



## Mirannan

Ray McCarthy said:


> Lots of rocks, dwarf planets and comets.
> Two families: Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud
> 
> If there is anything as larger than Pluto it must be far out. Lots of very small planets, but I don't think any have a prince and a rose.
> 
> The Oort Cloud is a THOUSAND times further away than Pluto at it's furthest from the sun, when it's in the Kuiper belt
> 
> http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs



There is at least one object (Eris) beyond Neptune which is larger than Pluto, although for some technical reason it isn't classed as being in the Kuiper Belt.

Given that there is very little light way out there, and that the Kuiper Belt is a very big place, I think it easily possible that some currently undiscovered object in the Kuiper belt is larger than Pluto.

For similar reasons, it's also possible (though less likely) that there is an undiscovered ice giant out there, maybe at 100AU or so. It's not even beyond the bounds of possibility that there is a brown, or VERY feeble red, dwarf orbiting somewhere between the Kuiper and the Oort Cloud.

To demonstrate the possibility, Alpha Centauri has a red dwarf companion (Proxima) which is an M5.5 and 900+ AU from the A star. It's quite possible that an unnoticed M8 or M9 dwarf is hiding way out there. The limit appears to be around 2000AU for a binary star.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

I think we would see the gravitational effect of a brown or red dwarf, which would have to be many times more massive than Jupiter.
Eris was thought to be larger than Pluto till New Horizons enabled better measurement. It's still thought to be 27% more massive, but is actually smaller.

Eris is 2,326 ± 12 kilometres. In July New Horizons caused size of Pluto to be upgraded to 2,370 km! Thus Pluto is less dense than expected.

I'm sure there are lots of exciting things to be found in the Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud. New Horizons may even discover something. It's still got a mission.

Eris and Dysnomia(its one known moon) are currently the most distant known natural objects in the Solar System apart from Comets.

Future Mission objectives of New Horizons after the Pluto flyby listed on Wikipedia.



> Because the flight path is determined by the Pluto flyby, with only minimal hydrazine remaining [rocket fuel], objects need to be found within a cone, extending from Pluto, of less than a degree's width, and within 55 AU. Beyond 55 AU, the communications link will become too weak [to report to Earth].


----------



## Mirannan

Ray - I stand corrected. This does bring into play the issue of just what "largest" means. Mass or volume? Incidentally, this is an issue for an awful lot more objects. Up to their maximum mass, white dwarf stars get smaller the more massive they are. I'm not quite so certain of it, but believe the same is true of neutron stars. And, of course, any red giant is immensely larger in volume than any main sequence star.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Well till July, i.e. only some days ago as I write, they thought Eris was larger diameter and greater mass. Larger is usually volume. Visual. A kilo of Aluminium is "larger" than a kilo of Lead.

Stars are a lot odder than planets. But even Iron compresses. I believe the Earth's iron core is denser than iron in the crust. There are basically three classes of planets. The Gas Giants compress the most. But even the "rocky" planets like Earth compress as they are larger.

But stars compress far more with size than a gas giant. Hence a star x3 the mass of our sun might "burn" very much faster, maybe up to 9x faster. So will not be as long lived.

Neutron stars are the most dense thing not a black hole. I don't know if they vary in density like regular stars, possibly not as much as the range of possible masses is much less (only about 2:1 variation in mass observed)?

I think beyond about x3 solar masses they become black holes. One about the same mass as the sun is only about 12km diameter!  Thus density is about 300,000,000,000,000 x that of the sun.


EDIT:


> Some neutron stars rotate very rapidly (up to 716 times a second, or approximately 43,000 revolutions per minute) and emit beams of electromagnetic radiation as *Pulsars*. Indeed, the discovery of pulsars in 1967 first suggested that neutron stars exist. Gamma-ray bursts may be produced from rapidly rotating, high-mass stars that collapse to form a neutron star, or from the merger of binary neutron stars. There are thought to be on the order of 10^8 neutron stars in the galaxy, but they can only be easily detected in certain instances, such as if they are a pulsar or part of a binary system. Non-rotating and non-accreting neutron stars are virtually undetectable


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_Star

The Pulsars are a kind of Galactic "GPS". They can even be used today to navigate in our own Solar System.


----------



## Dave

Have you heard of the Titus-Bode Law? Before Pluto was discovered it was enthusiastically used to predict that there would be a big planet out beyond Neptune and I remember Patrick Moore still being quite keen on it in the 1970's. The oddness of the Pluto-Charon system doesn't necessarily discredit the Law completely (since there is no theory of a causal effect for it in any case, it is just a mathematical curiousity) and because there probably still is some very large planet out there that we haven't discovered. It works in other planetary systems we have recently discovered, and all it means in our own is that some very strange but cataclysmic event happened out there. Don't forget that also well as having a smaller orbit than the Law predicts, Neptune also spins very, very fast, and has a satellite, Triton, that orbits in the opposite direction of Neptune's axis of rotation.


----------



## Vertigo

The presence of Pluto was first predicted based on tiny perturbations in Uranus' orbit:



> In the 1840s, Urbain Le Verrier used Newtonian mechanics to predict the position of the then-undiscovered planet Neptune after analysing perturbations in the orbit of Uranus.[27] Subsequent observations of Neptune in the late 19th century led astronomers to speculate that Uranus's orbit was being disturbed by another planet besides Neptune.



This would suggest that the possibility of finding anything truly massive out there is very slim. If perturbations of the orbit of Uranus caused by the tiny mass of Pluto (smaller and much less massive than our moon, remember) can be detected then I can't see anything truly massive being out there without our being able to detect its effect on our known planets. Certainly not something like a red dwarf.


----------



## Serendipity

Vertigo said:


> The presence of Pluto was first predicted based on tiny perturbations in Uranus' orbit:
> 
> 
> 
> This would suggest that the possibility of finding anything truly massive out there is very slim. If perturbations of the orbit of Uranus caused by the tiny mass of Pluto (smaller and much less massive than our moon, remember) can be detected then I can't see anything truly massive being out there without our being able to detect its effect on our known planets. Certainly not something like a red dwarf.



We know that a red dwarf star, Scholz’s star, passed through our Solar System 70,000 years ago (and this was only discovered in the last year or so). In other words the mass was there, but has moved on. As to how it perturbed the Solar System, others with the necessary computation tools would be able to tell you better than me.


----------



## Venusian Broon

Serendipity said:


> We know that a red dwarf star, Scholz’s star, passed through our Solar System 70,000 years ago (and this was only discovered in the last year or so). In other words the mass was there, but has moved on. As to how it perturbed the Solar System, others with the necessary computation tools would be able to tell you better than me.



Yeah we discussed it a little bit here on the forums: https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/551561/

The thing that stuck in my mind about the article was how little it had seemed to have affected anything. i.e. they'd run simulations and no perturbations _and_ there was no strange anomalies in the real data that might be explained by it

The only reason they knew about it was they had more accurately determined its trajectory in the local area and worked out it must have brushed by at that time.


----------



## hardsciencefanagain

Summarizing from the work of Mamajek,Burgasser and Kniazev:
If W0720* experienced occasional flares similar to those of the active M8 star SDSS J022116.84+194020.4 , then
the star may have been rarely visible** with the naked eye from Earth for minutes or hours during the flare events. Hence, while the binary system was too dim to see with the naked eye in its quiescent state during its flyby of the solar system 70 kya, flares by the M9.5 primary may have provided visible short-lived transients _*visible to our ancestors*_.
*Scholz's Star
**V(isibility) around 6
For comparison, flybys this close (0.25 pc)are statistically rare (2.4%) among encounters by all
stellar systems that penetrate the Sun's tidal radius of1.35 pc of which 4.5 occur per Myr

intriguing
PS:
Simulations byFeng & Bailer-Jones (2014) suggest that encounters with gamma
< 105:3 are unlikely to generate an enhancement in the distribution of longitudes for long-period cometscompared to that predicted to be generated by Galactic
tidal effects. All of the 104 simulated orbits had gamma <107:0, hence the pass of the W0720 system should havea negligible statistical impact on the ux of long-period comets during the coming millenia.
*Gamma* is the parameter:encounter induced flux of Oort Cloud comets
(_vide_)Feng, F. & Bailer-Jones, C. A. L. 2014, Monthly Notices of the
Royal Astronomical Society, 442, 3653


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Serendipity said:


> passed through our Solar System 70,000 years ago


Sort of!


> Estimates indicate that the WISE 0720−0846 system passed about *52,000* astronomical units (0.25 parsecs; 0.82 light-years) from the Sun about 70,000 years ago


Kuiper belt: 30 AU to approximately 50 AU from the Sun.
Oort Cloud: 100,000 AU from the sun.  About 2,000 further away than any known object other than comets. Unlike the Kuiper belt which is a torus or doughnut shape (hence "belt") roughly in the plane of the ecliptic, the Oort Cloud is presumed like a very thin "shell". We can't at all detect parts that are in direction of the more obvious parts of Milky way.

So it might have disturbed the orbits of some comets (or maybe nothing) in the Oort Cloud as we know little about it apart from comets that have been documented in Solar orbit (which were not affected).

EDIT:
Eris and its moon are the furthest known objects in the Solar System, on an elliptical orbit 38 to 98 AU orbit (Perihelion to Aphelion), so Scholz's star just a little less than 1000x as far as the mean of Eris's orbit. It's very unlikely to have been visible. If orbital period given in Wikipedia is correct, then for Eris, the passage of Scholz's star (WISE 0720−0846 system) was only 125 orbits (Eris "years") ago!


----------



## Serendipity

Ray McCarthy said:


> Sort of!
> 
> Kuiper belt: 30 AU to approximately 50 AU from the Sun.
> Oort Cloud: 100,000 AU from the sun. About 2,000 further away than any known object other than comets. Unlike the Kuiper belt which is a torus or doughnut shape (hence "belt") roughly in the plane of the ecliptic, the Oort Cloud is presumed like a very thin "shell". We can't at all detect parts that are in direction of the more obvious parts of Milky way.
> 
> So it might have disturbed the orbits of some comets (or maybe nothing) in the Oort Cloud as we know little about it apart from comets that have been documented in Solar orbit (which were not affected).
> 
> EDIT:
> Eris and its moon are the furthest known objects in the Solar System, on an elliptical orbit 38 to 98 AU orbit (Perihelion to Aphelion), so Scholz's star just a little less than 1000x as far as the mean of Eris's orbit. It's very unlikely to have been visible. If orbital period given in Wikipedia is correct, then for Eris, the passage of Scholz's star (WISE 0720−0846 system) was only 125 orbits (Eris "years") ago!



Sedna is a trans-Neptunian minor planet that whose orbit's closest approach is 76 astronomical units (perihelion), aphelion is c. 936 astronomical units. Its semi-major axis is 524 astronomical units. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90377_Sedna for more details.


----------



## hardsciencefanagain

and:
http://home.dtm.ciw.edu/users/sheppard/pub/TrujilloSheppard2014.pdf


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Interesting, obviously the Eris article I read was out of date.


Serendipity said:


> Sedna is a trans-Neptunian minor planet



It's not an object like Pluto or Eris. Too far away to be influenced by Neptune:


> It is a Detached KBO. Its perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) is at 76 AU. This means that it is effectively beyond the scattering influence of Neptune. This is unlike the Classical KBOs, and unlike the Scattered KBOs. It is similar, dynamically, to 2000 CR105 (for which a/e/i = 227AU/0.805/22.7) which has perihelion at 44 AU, also outside Neptune's reach, and which has been discussed in papers by Gladman et al (Icarus 157, 269, 2002) and Emelyanenko et al (Monthly Notices RAS, 338, 443, 2003). Other objects have larger aphelia than Sedna's 990 AU (e.g. Kuiper Belt Object 2000 OO67, with aphelion at 1010 AU) and many comets travel to larger distances. Sedna is interesting because of its perihelion distance.



Estimated 11,000 year orbit! A cold dark place. The sun a mere pinprick of light and stars visible in daytime sky.

I wonder how many objects there are of any significant size between the regular Kuipner Belt and the Oort Cloud. Will New Horizons spot something new before we lose communications with it?


----------



## hardsciencefanagain

any use?
i've deleted the links...


----------



## Ray McCarthy

I can't go downloading PDFs *without knowing size*. In browser viewing is a nonsense and should be disabled. It downloads a temporary copy and makes your browser vulnerable to freezing, malware or crashing.

One article incorrectly claims Sedna is part of Oort cloud, even at furthest distance from sun it's not even at inner edge:

*Warning LOG scale*





Larger sizes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PIA17046_-_Voyager_1_Goes_Interstellar.jpg

We lose communication with New Horizons long before 100 AU, beyond 55AU the communications link will become too weak. Pluto is on inner part of orbit at the minute, Neptune is about 30 AU away. Pluto varies from about 29 to 49 AU and right now is only slightly further away than Neptune.


----------



## BAYLOR

After the Oort cloud Next stop Alpha Centauri. I look forward to those picture. Of course, it could be a while before the Craft gets there.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

If ever ... the graph is logarithmic* to compare distances and not direction and I have no idea which direction out of the Solar System that Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and New Horizons are headed.  The last images will be roughly when it has travelled only 55AU.  Voyager has, I think, a plutonium source generating heat and any electricity needed via thermo-electric (thermocouple?) devices.


> _*Voyager 1*_ is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, to study the outer Solar System. Operating for 37 years, 10 months and 11 days the spacecraft *still* communicates with the Deep Space Network to receive routine commands and return data. At a distance of about *131.982 AU* (1.974×*10^*10 km; 0.002087 ly), it is the farthest spacecraft from Earth.



Evidently the New Horizons has very much less communications life as communications will cease at about half the distance Voyager 2 has reached.



> _*Voyager 2*_ is a 722 kg (1,592 lb) space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. It was actually launched before _Voyager 1_, but _Voyager 2_ was sent on a different trajectory and arrived at Jupiter and Saturn after Voyager 1. _Voyager 2_ has been operating for 37 years, 10 months and 28 days as of 18 July 2015, and the Deep Space Network is *still* receiving its data transmissions. At a distance of *108 AU* (1.62×10^10 km) from the Sun as of April, 2015, it is one of the most distant man-made objects (along with _Voyager 1_, _Pioneer 10_ and _Pioneer 11_).



[* if it was NOT logarithmic, everything from the Sun to Kuiper Belt would only be ONE PIXEL on your screen with Oort Cloud on the other edge and the neighbouring stars not shown!]


----------



## Serendipity

Above was doodling with the dwarf / minor planets in the Kuiper Belt. Please bear in mind my drawing skills are very limited, especially in powerpoint.


----------



## Dave

Ray McCarthy said:


> I have no idea which direction out of the Solar System that Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and New Horizons are headed.


The Voyagers both went off out of the orbital plane so they are unlikely to ever encounter anything else again. I think New Horizons must also be slightly outside the orbital plane because Pluto has an eccentric orbit that is slightly out of the plane. As someone just said, the power will probably run out before they ever reached the Oort Cloud in any case.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

I suspected that.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

New Horizons Pluto Mission a success:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/21/new_horizons_pluto_mission_resounding_success/


----------



## Vertigo

Did anyone else see the Sky at Night special on New Horizons last night? I recorded it and only watched it today. To be honest if you've being staying up to date with everything as it has come in then there wasn't really much new.

But there was one very interesting theory to do with the young surface. It is currently thought that Charon was formed when another large object collided with Mars and it has always been assumed that his happened a very long time ago but maybe it wasn't quite so long ago. Maybe Charon is actually the youngest known object in the solar system. This could explain the absence of craters, the mountains etc.

Interesting thought.

Edit: Hmm... just thought of a problem with that scenario; a relatively recent event, say in the last few hundred million years, would likely leave both bodies hot enough to still be active today, but would that be enough time for them to have become mutually tide-locked?


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Vertigo said:


> Sky at Night special on New Horizons last night?


Rats. I forgot!


----------



## Mirannan

Ray McCarthy said:


> Rats. I forgot!



Should be on Iplayer?


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Mirannan said:


> Should be on Iplayer?


No use here for various reasons. Some of the Radio programs work, all the TV is blocked even though it's all on Freesat (all of Ireland), Freeview (about 30% of Ireland), Sky Ireland (all of Ireland) and UPC Ireland (Cities & larger towns only). 

Besides I don't have enough data cap. We don't usually watch ANY internet video at all. Instead I  have two PVRs, a Humax and also a PC. Satellite Distribution system with four satellites, and aerial distribution system.  We sometimes buy DVDs.  People in the cities and larger towns can get Broadband with no data cap (It's actually really about 250 GByte, but only persistent high usage gets throttled and letters looking for money.). We are on a special fixed wireless link, so throttling to 64K  (0.064M bps) is automatic if usage is exceeded until usage drops under 80% in rolling 30 days. Otherwise greedy people would make the service too slow as contention would rise.  This is why "unlimited" data on Mobile is an oxymoron. It means everyone gets a slower service and 10% of people (paying same money) are using 90% of traffic. I used to work for an internet company. Unless there is fibre all the way and massive capacity, "unlimited" just means slow and a minority of torrent & video users getting subsidised by the majority.


----------



## Dave

Ray McCarthy said:


> Instead I  have two PVRs, a Humax and also a PC. Satellite Distribution system with four satellites, and aerial distribution system.


Ray, if your rural Ireland house has all that on the roof your neighbours must think you are a government communications headquarters! However, we digress...


----------



## Ray McCarthy

I didn't mention my numerous Amateur Radio and listening aerials. I did have four dishes for a while. I cut back to one 110cm motorised and one 95cm with four LNBFs for four satellites (An LNB mounted to west of main LNB will pick up a further east satellite).
I have one 45ft mast as well as three poles on the roof.
A friend has a 3.7m mesh dish with dual A-Z motors never assembled. I'd love to have that on the shed roof as basic radio telescope.

If I had an elevation motor on my 3m long  UHF/VHF array it could do moon bounce and some Stellar radio reception.


----------



## Vertigo

Ray McCarthy said:


> Rats. I forgot!


I wouldn't worry too much; you've been staying up to date with everything here as it's been happening and they didn't really have any privileged access other than interviews with the scientists and even they didn't really say anything more than has already been reported and discussed here. Other than that one theory about a recent collision which one of the scientists mentioned, there was little new material. They did go see a lab experiment showing how Nitrogen + methane + UV light does actually produce a reddish powder which is where they think Pluto's colour comes from but again the only thing there that was new was actually seeing the experiment and the tholin it produced.

But there were no new images or further speculation, so you've not missed much.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Better photos of Nix and Hydra
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/22/giant_red_jelly_bean_found_orbiting_mountainous_pluto/


----------



## Vertigo

That's the first Pluto shot I've seen showing a heavily cratered area, suggesting that the new surface areas are localised, which in turn is really another nail in the coffin for that recent collision theory. However it is interesting that those mountains occur pretty much on the border of a young and old surface area.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

And another BBC update similar to The Register:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33622408

More info Friday.


----------



## Vertigo

Ray McCarthy said:


> Rats. I forgot!


@Ray McCarthy just noticed the sky at night Pluto special is being repeated tonight on bbc4 at 2355


----------



## Dave

So BBC4 really does have some use?


----------



## Ray McCarthy

It used to be better.
I think it all when downhill about the time Channel Five launched. 
We have about 400 too many channels.

Now if weather is good it will record. The evil Leylandii fir trees that were 6ft high next door when we moved in are now over 20ft and in wet windy weather tend to intermittently block our satellite signals for Freesat on 28E (the 19E, 13E and 9E satellites are not affected)


----------



## Vertigo

Dave said:


> So BBC4 really does have some use?


It's not just the repeat, Dave; The Sky at Night was moved to BBC4 a few years back when the BBC were threatening to cancel it. To be honest I watch BBC4 more than any other channel these days (not that I find much to watch at all). BBC2 used to host all the 'serious' BBC stuff but now a lot of that stuff seems to be moving over to BBC4.


----------



## Mirannan

Vertigo said:


> It's not just the repeat, Dave; The Sky at Night was moved to BBC4 a few years back when the BBC were threatening to cancel it. To be honest I watch BBC4 more than any other channel these days (not that I find much to watch at all). BBC2 used to host all the 'serious' BBC stuff but now a lot of that stuff seems to be moving over to BBC4.



I'm inclined to agree. It also seems that the BBC is more interested in useless rubbish (such as sending an outside broadcast team to stand in the rain outside Downing Street to cover political stories, instead of handling it in studio) than in providing content. It is rather likely that BBC3 will be transferred to a web-only service fairly soon; the BBC is claiming lack of money. Maybe if they didn't waste quite as much...


----------



## Ray McCarthy

It's because BBC etc are now instead of doing what they think they ought to do in the sense they had in past, they have three problems:

Outsourced too much.
Competing with lowest common denominator Multichannel TV, even though the TOTAL viewing time for any non-Terrestrial TV channel and ANY pay TV channel is less than 2%!
Dominated by under-educated "arts" people with narrow agendas.
Hence quality down the tubes.
The original concept of ITV has gone, regional stations competing to supply the national network. Government let ITV PLC take over almost every region. Only STV and UTV are left.
Channel Five was a mistake.
Channel Four suffering from same disease as BBC, completely different station to original 1980s and intention. Garbage like Big Brother. Karl Marx said TV was the Opium of the Masses. Or he would have if still alive in 1990s. They shuttered their own film production and stopped commissioning the excellent Animations. 
Purely chasing ratings is ultimately death. I was first in the USA in 1984 I think and saw Multichannel US TV. I was depressed by it as I could see it was going to be the future in Europe.
The Specialist channels have not lived up to promises either. They are full of repeats, bad science and sensationalism.
BBC not yet as bad as Italian TV though. Or RTE.

Each year the dominance of American programming rises and displaces even more European programming so many stations (even NOT english speaking) are down to only 22% of non-news/current affairs is local.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Just finished watching recording.
1) Why two presenters? Yer woman seemed to be the expert one?
2) Why play on beach with pebbles instead of decent graphics (the short graphic after was too fast)
3) Why the messing with the tablet and finger instead of full screen images and pointer?

I thought a very amateurish production.

EDIT:
You did warn me I hadn't missed much.


----------



## Vertigo

That's always tended to be how The Sky at Night is done; it is and always has been deliberately amateur. I think a large proportion of their audience are young adults just getting into astronomy. Not exclusively YA by any means but they are a very large component.

To be fair, on this occasion I think they were under time pressure. The press conference they were attending was only two days (I think) before the programme was aired, so little time for fancy graphics.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Patrick Moore was originally a self taught Amateur Enthusiast. I don't think anyone can replicate his style!

I've not seen Sky at Night since the Moore days! Possibly I only had B&W TV! I moved from UK in early Feb 1983 and we never paid for cable (too poor quality and too expensive) but when Sky Digital officially launched here with subsidy we upgraded from Sky Analogue which we had for a short while (Channel five, some other channels and German TV was all free in Sky Analogue days, so we had satellite for over a year with no sub). Then eventually we cancelled Sky as waste of money, even before BBC / ITV/C4 etc went Free To Air.

So we had lost the habit of many BBC shows.


----------



## Vertigo

First episode was the year I was born!!!  And yes no one can ever really replace Sir Patrick Moore! I think I'd have been terrified to be asked, even if my knowledge was up to it!

Back on track, there's another big press release today with more images etc.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

I don't think we had a TV then, but I was too young to remember anyway, even though I'm a bit older.


> The show had the same permanent presenter, Patrick Moore, from its first airing on 24 April 1957 until 7 January 2013, Moore having died on 9 December 2012. This made it the longest-running programme with the same presenter in television history. Many early episodes are missing, either because the tapes were wiped or thrown out, or because the episode was broadcast live



Since lots more important BBC film was trashed and tapes reused, I'm amazed any survive from before 1990s. When I was in BBC in late 1970s the row about reuse of £85 tapes of expensive to make and irreplaceable programs had become epic. We only later discovered about film destruction to save tiny amounts of storage costs. Accountants and Book Keepers should oil the wheels of Commerce, not set policy of Institutions, Public Service providers and non-profit organisations.

Bruce Forsythe is of course the longest running TV personality, having been on air in 1939.


----------



## Dave

Ray McCarthy said:


> Patrick Moore was originally a self taught Amateur Enthusiast. I don't think anyone can replicate his style!


Trying not to take this too far off the topic but once upon a time EVERYONE in science was "a self-taught Amateur Enthusiast." There were very few "state" sponsored scientists until relatively recent times. Today they are called "citizen scientists." I'm a citizen scientist! I am helping to map the spawning sites and the extent of a fish called the Smelt in the River Thames with the London Zoological Society. We know about the ecology of deep oceans and the top of Everest, but the ecology of tidal estuaries in still a mystery. Last year I also listened to a speech from someone who is the Professor of Citizen Science at UCL. They have people doing all kinds of things. There are people measuring the health benefits of doing exercise outdoors. They have people recording wildlife with phone apps. They have people in Twickenham with phone apps monitoring aircraft noise from Heathrow Airport in their own back gardens. There is no other way you could ever get such detailed data recorded, however much you spent!

But think about many of the major scientific experiments - discovery of elements, electricity and magnetism - all amateur enthusiasts! Amateur naturalists were responsible for creating the subjects of Geography, Geology, Botany, Zoology and especially Paleontology. And there would be no Astronomy without enthusiastic amateurs. In fact, it is STILL an area where amateurs can make new discoveries at very little cost i.e. a back garden telescope.

Patrick Moore intended to go to University but was prevented by the Second World War and became a RAF navigator instead. I also believe his fiancee tragically died. However, at the time of the Moon landings he was still THE world expert on the geography of the Moon. Not bad for an enthusiastic amateur, I think!


----------



## Ursa major

Dave said:


> I'm a citizen scientist! I am helping to map the spawning sites and the extent of a fish called the Smelt in the River Thames


So citizen scientists are not to be sniffed at....


Speaking of amateurs.... It was pointed out on the Sky At Night programme that Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto, did not go to college. As Wiki explains:





> After his family moved to Burdett, Kansas in 1922, Tombaugh's plans for attending college were frustrated when a hailstorm ruined his family's farm crops. Starting in 1926, he built several telescopes with lenses and mirrors by himself. He sent drawings of Jupiter and Mars to the Lowell Observatory, which offered him a job. Tombaugh worked there from 1929 to 1945.


----------



## Vertigo

Dave said:


> Patrick Moore intended to go to University but was prevented by the Second World War and became a RAF navigator instead. I also believe his fiancee tragically died. However, at the time of the Moon landings he was still THE world expert on the geography of the Moon. Not bad for an enthusiastic amateur, I think!


I believe that is correct with regard to his fiancée and certainly is correct re the geography of the moon. I believe his maps of the moon were used for all the early landings.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

More articles
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/25/pluto_surprises_scientists_with_hazy_atmosphere/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/24/pluto_planet_nasa/


----------



## Vertigo

Interesting stuff, but a shame there'll be no more pretty piccies until September. All techie engineering data until then apparently.


----------



## Serendipity

Very interesting indeed.... the following should be considered speculative on the grounds I'm not expert astro-whatever...

Neptune's largest moon, Triton is considered as a planetary capture from the Kuiper Belt. Triton actually has nitrogen polar caps - which of course are glaciers. I understand that there is a sea of liquid nitrogen beneath the polar caps which is used to power geysers, which were observed by Voyager 2 on its 1989 fly past. These geysers left trails of dust on the surface.

What intrigues me is that Pluto has similar polar caps, but no (as yet) obvious signs of geysers... it would be interesting to know exactly why there is a difference....

Yes, there are other similarities between Triton and Pluto... but I'd be here all day trying to work them out and listing them...

Edit: PS The reason I know so much about this is that I had a story published about Triton's Mahilani geyser and of course I did my homework for that.


----------



## Mirannan

Serendipity said:


> Very interesting indeed.... the following should be considered speculative on the grounds I'm not expert astro-whatever...
> 
> Neptune's largest moon, Triton is considered as a planetary capture from the Kuiper Belt. Triton actually has nitrogen polar caps - which of course are glaciers. I understand that there is a sea of liquid nitrogen beneath the polar caps which is used to power geysers, which were observed by Voyager 2 on its 1989 fly past. These geysers left trails of dust on the surface.
> 
> What intrigues me is that Pluto has similar polar caps, but no (as yet) obvious signs of geysers... it would be interesting to know exactly why there is a difference....
> 
> Yes, there are other similarities between Triton and Pluto... but I'd be here all day trying to work them out and listing them...
> 
> Edit: PS The reason I know so much about this is that I had a story published about Triton's Mahilani geyser and of course I did my homework for that.



I believe Triton is slightly darker than Pluto, and it's also slightly closer to the Sun on average. It's also considerably bigger than Pluto, which might make a difference. But (IMHO, I'm certainly no professional planetologist) the main reason for the differences may well be that Triton gets some tidal heating.


----------



## Brian G Turner

The BBC's coverage of the latest images. Looking forward to seeing more from September. 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33657447


----------



## BAYLOR

Wonderful stuff, so far.


----------



## Serendipity

They've been busy suggesting names for various features of Pluto and Charon... see http://space.io9.com/were-actively-creating-the-geekiest-world-in-the-univer-1721448557 ... needless to say there are famous science fictional character on Charon...


----------



## Brian G Turner

Detailed images of Pluto resume their transmission:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34221730

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150910


----------



## BigBadBob141

Brian thanks for the pics!
It's amazing to see so much structure, there appear to be dunes?
This is very strange as I would think you would need winds for this.
Just how thick is Pluto's atmosphere if any?
Plus being on the edge of deep space how would it get enough energy from the sun to fuel them???
All in all pretty mind blowing pictures!


----------



## Vertigo

That's exactly what the scientist are scratching their collective heads about. The atmosphere simply shouldn't be enough for winds to move particles sufficiently to create dunes.

I could have sworn I'd already posted to this thread to thank Brian for remembering about the resumption of images. It had completely slipped my mind!


----------



## Brian G Turner

More pics from Pluto coming through:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150917

including this stunning one of ice mountains:


----------



## Vertigo

The clear glaciation in these two images is incredible and very obvious:







@Brian Turner did you look at the full crescent image that that image of yours is taken from? I think the area to the left of that image is even more bizarre. It looks almost like clouds but, obviously, I'm aware it isn't.

These are some incredible images we're getting now.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Amazing.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Vertigo said:


> It looks almost like clouds


Pluto really does have weather and clouds. Likely Nitrogen.


----------



## Vertigo

Not as dense as what I was looking at in that image though. I don't think there is enough atmosphere density for what we would call clouds. Certainly with regard to those images they only talk about some 'fog or near-surface haze' which is visible in the main picture that Brian's is taken from; just below and to the right of Brian's clip. There, right on the terminator, the shadows of the hills can be seen in that haze.


----------



## Parson

Every time I see something like these photos I'm left to wonder what other wonders we have yet to experience.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Vertigo said:


> I don't think there is enough atmosphere density for what we would call clouds


See 4th image here (I think!).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/18/pluto_crescent_pictures/


----------



## Droflet

And I've got this right? Pluto is no longer a planet? Hmm.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Too many things of a similar size, so it's been a Dwarf Planet for ages.


----------



## Vertigo

Ray McCarthy said:


> See 4th image here (I think!).
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/18/pluto_crescent_pictures/


Yup that's the haze they were on about. The area that I think looks like cloud seen from an aircraft (but I know it isn't) is in the left half of this crescent photo. It's looks more like cloud in this full size image:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/pics/Pluto-Wide-FINAL-9-17-15.jpg


----------



## Droflet

Yeah Vertigo, clouds was my immediate first reaction. Then my brain kicked in. Truly wonderful images. As a kid I thought by now we would be walking on other planets, far, far away. The realities have proved to be different. Even so, these images give me some small hope for the future.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

It's quite amazing, no Martian canals, but Charon and Pluto a binary system with geology no-one could have imagined. Reality can be stranger than fiction.


----------



## Vertigo

It's also very frustrating; I see those images and I just want to go visit. Maybe climb some of those ice mountains!


----------



## Droflet

And do a little skiing? Vertigo comes a cropper on Pluto. I'd pay real money to see that.


----------



## Vertigo

Eeeee that would be fun


----------



## Parson

I'm afraid a small hope of other planets in the next few decades is indeed remote. Beyond the obvious problem of a true space drive, the problem of radiation has become more of a deterrent than I at lease would have believed a few decades ago.


----------



## Serendipity

OK... as I've been well and truly busted... (someone talked)... the ice stuff will be complex to get right. The scientists will know the basics, but there some interesting combinations that can lead to spectacular effects, if you know where to look for them (or like me stumble across things by accident). All I'm saying is there will be surprises that will keep them busy analysing the planet for many many years to come...


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Serendipity said:


> the ice stuff will be complex to get right


Along with Antimony, water one of the few things that expands on freezing. Most solids sink in their liquid, ordinary Ice doesn't; or ponds, lakes and rivers would freeze solid.
The water ice on Pluto isn't like ordinary ice at all.



> Ice may be any one of the 17 known solid crystalline phases of water, or in an amorphous solid state at various densities.


see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice

*Ice IX*
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For fictional material in Cat's Cradle, see Ice-nine.
*Ice IX* is a form of solid water stable at temperatures below 140 K and pressures between 200 and 400 MPa. It has a tetragonal crystal lattice and a density of 1.16 g/cm³, 26% higher than ordinary ice. It is formed by cooling ice III from 208 K to 165 K (rapidly—to avoid forming ice II). Its structure is identical to ice III other than being hydrogen-ordered.

Ordinary water ice is known as ice Ih in the Bridgman nomenclature. Different types of ice, from ice II to ice XVI, have been created in the laboratory at different temperatures and pressures.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-type_model


----------



## Mirannan

It appears that the only form of ice stable in Pluto surface conditions is ice XI. However, ice I is metastable WRT ice XI at those temperatures; the transition is thought to take hundreds of thousands of years.


----------



## Brian G Turner

There were some brilliant colour photos in _The Independent_ of Pluto - but I haven't seen anything on the New Horizons site.


----------



## Serendipity

Ray McCarthy said:


> Along with Antimony, water one of the few things that expands on freezing. Most solids sink in their liquid, ordinary Ice doesn't; or ponds, lakes and rivers would freeze solid.
> The water ice on Pluto isn't like ordinary ice at all.
> 
> 
> see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice
> 
> *Ice IX*
> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> For fictional material in Cat's Cradle, see Ice-nine.
> *Ice IX* is a form of solid water stable at temperatures below 140 K and pressures between 200 and 400 MPa. It has a tetragonal crystal lattice and a density of 1.16 g/cm³, 26% higher than ordinary ice. It is formed by cooling ice III from 208 K to 165 K (rapidly—to avoid forming ice II). Its structure is identical to ice III other than being hydrogen-ordered.
> 
> Ordinary water ice is known as ice Ih in the Bridgman nomenclature. Different types of ice, from ice II to ice XVI, have been created in the laboratory at different temperatures and pressures.
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-type_model



And this is just water ice - which proves my point of the complexity of the ice structures. Of course there will be compound ices, and liquids and as we've seen from the photos a thin atmosphere. To add to complexity are the chaotic orbits of Pluto moons, which will exert gravitational tides on the planet in (very probably) ever different ways. And where there's pressure, there could be the making of liquids, which could lead to reactions.... the mind keeps on K-boggling...


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Mirannan said:


> in Pluto surface conditions is ice XI


Pesky Roman numerals. I got my X and I wrong!


----------



## Mirannan

Ray McCarthy said:


> Pesky Roman numerals. I got my X and I wrong!



Oh, I agree. I managed to find a phase diagram for water and ice IX isn't on it; apparently, this is because it is metastable at best.


----------



## Vertigo

Brian Turner said:


> There were some brilliant colour photos in _The Independent_ of Pluto - but I haven't seen anything on the New Horizons site.


Like this one maybe?
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/pics/lorri-rider.png
And this
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/pics/P_COLOR2_enhanced_release.jpg

You can get at them here: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/ They just don't appear to have made them easy to get at from their front page.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Yep, this is the one I meant:


----------



## Vertigo

Yep, pretty darn spectacular, though the Independent seemed to be getting into a bit of a tizzy about how colourful Pluto has turned out to be and was, I suspect, forgetting that these are enhanced colour images.


----------



## Brian G Turner

The BBC reports on a new and clear colour close-up of Charon:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34420062


----------



## thaddeus6th

I saw a comparison of the two objects, and was surprised just how large Charon is relative to Pluto. They're almost a pair, rather than planet and moon.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Isn't the centre of rotation above Pluto's surface making them a binary dwarf pair?  I forget!


----------



## Vertigo

> The center of mass (barycenter) of the Pluto–Charon system lies outside either body. Because neither object truly orbits the other, and Charon has 11.6% the mass of Pluto, it has been argued that Charon should be considered to be part of a binary system with Pluto. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) states that Charon is considered to be just a satellite of Pluto, but the idea that Charon might be classified a dwarf planet in its own right may be considered at a later date



That is one awesome photo and some interesting theories about the fractures around the middle.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

"That's no moon ... it's a ??"


----------



## Vertigo

So Pluto has been downgraded and maybe Charon is going to get upgraded!


----------



## Ray McCarthy

see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/03/pluto_charon_moon_split_open/
Obviously Charon is an egg. 
Brilliant and fascinating stuff


----------



## Vertigo

That seems a rather fitting comparison!


----------



## Serendipity

And guess what? Pluto has blue skies!!!!

One of latest photos...




 

Apparently they think it's due to the Sun's ultraviolet light interacting with the planetoid's nitrogen atmosphere to produce tholins.


----------



## Parson

Am I wrong in thinking that there would not be enough light for Pluto to glow like that, at least with normal eyesight?


----------



## Vertigo

I think you're probably right there, Parson. I suspect all these images are taken with cameras a lot more sensitive than our eyes.


----------



## Ray McCarthy

I think the sky is black on Pluto, very thin atmosphere. At sunrise and sunset you might see the blue glow. That photo is only possible when you are travelling beyond Pluto. Not possible to see that from the sun ward side.


----------



## Serendipity

The latest assessment of Pluto can be found at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/350/6258/aad1815.full 
Amongst other things they've come to the conclusion that there must a small amount of radioactive decay at the core - I'm personally not convinced.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

What I didn't realise until recently is that it is going to continue, rendezvousing with a Kuiper Belt object: _New Horizons_ is expected to encounter 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019. Amazinger and amazinger!


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Kerberos and Pluto's other moons
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34615229


----------



## Ray McCarthy

New target after 16 minute motor / engine fire
www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/23/new_horizon_aims_new_target/


----------



## Stephen Palmer

We live in extraordinary times.


----------



## Serendipity

Hm... and more pictures keep on coming in. And now there's fog!!!

http://space.io9.com/sunset-on-pluto-is-beyond-gorgeous-in-latest-photos-fro-1731433085

If you follow through the various links from this you find the atmosphere is layered... my mind's off to have another boggle...


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Last engine firing (burn) for Kuiper belt target.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/08/new_horizons_makes_last_burn_for_kuiper_belt_target/


----------



## Parson

I sincerely hope this project gets funded, but pure science often gets short shrift in National budgets, which can find money to subsidize all kinds of less worthy endeavors.


----------



## Serendipity

And now we have volcanoes on Pluto... see http://www.theguardian.com/science/...could-be-ice-spewing-volcanoes-scientists-say ... no surprises there... at least for me...


----------



## Ray McCarthy

It's amazing ...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/10/ice_volcanoes_just_part_of_plutonic_pandemonium/

The moon orbits


> The other surprise is that even given predictions that Pluto and its small moons would have messy orbits, they're much more chaotic than expected. NASA's provided an animation (below), which New Horizons team member Mark Showalter (author of the animation) described as “pandemonium”.
> 
> Youtube Video


----------



## Ray McCarthy

Sharpest photos yet?
New Horizons: Sharpest images of Pluto's surface - BBC News


----------



## BAYLOR

Incredible.


----------



## Parson

It is a set of amazing photos, letting us know how similar and yet utterly alien the surface of Pluto is. Wow! just wow!


----------



## BigBadBob141

Wow, wow and wow again!!!!!!!!!


----------



## Vertigo

Fascinating that even Pluto's rather tenuous atmosphere appears to be enough to raise ripples/dunes on the Sputnik Planum. They must be moderately large to be so visible at that range.


----------



## REBerg

Does the amazing and enormous heart-shaped feature on Pluto's surface hold any significance? A message left for Humanity when it reached the very edge of the solar system, like Clarke's monoliths?

Not for hard-edged scientists, probably, but for science fiction fans and other dreamers?


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Definitely wow.


----------



## Serendipity

Curiouser and curiouser... 

Interesting modelling results concerning the heart-shaped region on Pluto can be found here - ‘X’ Marks a Curious Corner on Pluto’s Icy Plains


----------



## REBerg

Tantalizing. We need boots on Pluto ground -- well-insulated boots.


----------



## Vertigo

Think it might be a wee while before that happens!


----------



## Ursa major

Vertigo said:


> REBerg said:
> 
> 
> 
> Tantalizing. We need boots on Pluto ground -- well-insulated boots.
> 
> 
> 
> Think it might be a wee while before that happens!
Click to expand...

Is someone getting cold feet about (properly equipped) manned exploration of the solar system...?


----------



## REBerg

Vertigo said:


> Think it might be a wee while before that happens!


OK. It's been a wee bit. Now?


----------



## Serendipity

NASA have published a new higher resolution photo of the layers of Pluto's atmosphere. See Pluto’s Haze in Bands of Blue. For the techies among you, the report goes on to say...

"Scientists believe the haze is a photochemical smog resulting from the action of sunlight on methane and other molecules in Pluto’s atmosphere, producing a complex mixture of hydrocarbons such as acetylene and ethylene.  These hydrocarbons accumulate into small particles, a fraction of a micrometer in size, and scatter sunlight to make the bright blue haze seen in this image.

As they settle down through the atmosphere, the haze particles form numerous intricate, horizontal layers, some extending for hundreds of miles around Pluto. The haze layers extend to altitudes of over 120 miles (200 kilometers)."


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## Serendipity

Wow! Now we have real icebergs on a nitrogen glacier - will Pluto ever stop surprising us!
For details see: Pluto’s Mysterious, Floating Hills


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## Serendipity

Hm... now there was an ocean on Charon, or at least that's what the evidence suggests... Pluto’s ‘Hulk-like’ Moon Charon: A Possible Ancient Ocean?


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## Parson

This just keeps getting more surprising.


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## Serendipity

Anyone fancy skiing on methane snow on Pluto? see Methane Snow on Pluto’s Peaks


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## Parson

This has been a true journey of discovery. Pluto seems the most alien of the objects we've viewed in the solar system.


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## Brian G Turner

New Scientist reports on cloud layers on Pluto:
Exclusive photos: Clouds seen on Pluto for first time


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## Serendipity

Brian Turner said:


> New Scientist reports on cloud layers on Pluto:
> Exclusive photos: Clouds seen on Pluto for first time



This got a large laugh from me... my imagination went into overdrive... I had C.A.T. (a ginger robo-cat with red eyes) skiing on his alloy claws, waving his tail around to steer himself, while the snowflakes gently fell on his fur and heading for 007-like adventures... ahem... I think I ought to tame my imagination...


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## Parson

I love the Star Trek test for a planet quoted in the New Scientist: "You know a planet when you see one out the window."


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## Serendipity

OK I give up... Pluto's atmosphere has blown my mind... see summary of this and four other scientific papers on Pluto-weirdness - Group


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## Brian G Turner

More on all that from New Scientist:
Pluto gives up its icy secrets as New Horizons data pours in


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## Ray McCarthy

Pluto's moons:
Hydra is brighter than Charon 
Icy Hydra outshines its dirty neighbour Charon


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## Serendipity

Here's NASA"s new video of Pluto put together from high resolution images...


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## Serendipity

Latest News from Pluto... it had a liquid water sub-surface ocean - see http://gizmodo.com/it-looks-like-pluto-has-a-liquid-water-ocean-1782418191


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## Brian G Turner

New Scientist provides an update on the anniversary of the flyby - as many other news outlets are - by updating us on discoveries that were made:
Five incredible things we know about Pluto since 2015’s fly-by


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## Brian G Turner

A little more on the research of Pluto's atmosphere - and a curious observation about the solar wind: New Horizons discovery raises solar wind riddle around Pluto


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## Serendipity

And here is something else 'to boggle about' regarding what's going on with the atmosphere in the Plutovian system... http://gizmodo.com/we-finally-know-what-this-big-red-splotch-on-plutos-moo-1786631582 !


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## Serendipity

Here's a little more info on that x-ray business... plus an intriguing thought about wider inter-galactic considerations... ahem... this kind of makes New Horizons not only live up to its name, but very cost effective...

http://gizmodo.com/pluto-is-emitting-x-rays-and-thats-really-weird-1786709072


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## Serendipity

Pluto has got a heartbeat - albeit a slow one, but a heartbeat nevertheless... see http://gizmodo.com/we-finally-know-what-made-the-huge-heart-on-pluto-1786802522


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## Serendipity

Some more commentary on Pluto's atmosphere here (in fact it's a nice summary).... http://gizmodo.com/plutos-skies-might-be-more-earth-like-than-we-imagined-1787977292


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## Parson

Who would have thought so much of interest would be developed by fly by satellite? Pretty amazing stuff.


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## Ursa major

And the list of interesting things continues to grow: 





> Pluto may harbour a slushy water ocean beneath its most prominent surface feature, known as the "heart". This could explain why part of the heart-shaped region - called Sputnik Planitia - is locked in alignment with Pluto's largest moon Charon. A viscous ocean beneath the icy crust could have acted as a heavy, irregular mass that rolled Pluto over, so that Sputnik Planitia was facing the moon. The findings are based on data from Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft.


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## Serendipity

Here's the latest summary of the science of Pluto...
http://gizmodo.com/the-biggest-heart-in-the-solar-system-has-an-incredible-1792349863


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## Brian G Turner

Apparently, Pluto has an atmosphere that's colder than it should be - but this could be down to soot, rather than specific gases: A layer of haze keeps Pluto’s atmosphere extremely cold


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## Brian G Turner

Seems a little late, but Charon has finally had some of its features officially named: Charon's First Official Feature Names  | Solar System Exploration: NASA Science


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## Brian G Turner

Also, apparently maps are now available, with more detailed commentary by astronomer Phil Plait: We now have official high-resolution maps of Pluto and Charon


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## BAYLOR

Brian G Turner said:


> Also, apparently maps are now available, with more detailed commentary by astronomer Phil Plait: We now have official high-resolution maps of Pluto and Charon



That heat shaped area , a large section of it seems to have complete absence of craters, Interesting .


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## thaddeus6th

Just watching a History Channel DVD series which is mostly on the solar system. About a decade old so some bits out of space, but it's still quite interesting.

Maybe this is crackers, but I wonder if Stirling engines would work in space? They were a rival to the early steam engine, and work where there's a temperature difference. Given space stuff tends to be very cold and any human habitation would have to be heated, it could be a means of reclaiming some of that energy.


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## Parson

thaddeus6th said:


> Maybe this is crackers, but I wonder if Stirling engines would work in space?



Clever thinking. Wikipedia says: it has a low power-to-weight ratio,[4] rendering it more suitable for use in static installations where space and weight are not at a premium. 

A space ship would seem to have both space and weight problems, at lease if you are going to blast them out of the earth's gravity well. And then I wonder what mass you would able to expel and thereby lose to produce thrust.


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## thaddeus6th

I was thinking of using them on the Moon or Mars, on a permanent base. The material could be mostly/entirely blasted there, and then shaped correctly by using 3D printers.


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