New Horizons to flyby Pluto this year

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:

_84254036_nh-color-pluto-charon.jpg
 
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:

_84254036_nh-color-pluto-charon.jpg
Click to expand...


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!
 
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.
 
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

_84264807_84264806.jpg



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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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.
 
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... :eek::cool::eek:
 
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.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...
Images of Pluto through the years (link to info on Hydra too)
 
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Thanks Ray, Those are cool shots and good insights.
 
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.
Click to expand...
Not yet an official name I think.

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