Astronomy

Take a bit of getting used to, I suppose...

It is now only a week to the flyby of Pluto/Charon and its moons. New Horizons has had its last course adjustment to make it pass between Pluto and Charon.

http://earthsky.org/space/pluto-char...ates-july-2015

The anomaly showed the importance of the robotics on that mission. I wonder why methane was considered important?

Jupiter and Venus are near each other in the night sky. http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/30/us/fea...ion/index.html

I think methane is important as indicating the possibility of extra-terrestrial life: http://www.space.com/29674-mars-mete...fe-search.html

Yes, that makes sense. On dwarf planets like Pluto it may be a liquid to support life in place of water.

In the coming week we will be getting better images of Pluto and Charon. This one from earth sky.com is the latest. I have often wondered what kind of images we can expect from New Horizons and I wondered how, if the probe passes between Pluto and Charon at tremendous speed, this will be done?

The answer lies in the New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). There is an article on it in Wikipedia, and more information at this site: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0709.4278.pdf.

The "whale" and "donut" are interesting formations on Pluto along with those spots. I was thinking as well that there may not be enough time to explore Pluto with just a fly-by.

Update Pluto:

http://www.space.com/29924-pluto-lar...ent=FeedBurner

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

I'm surprised they didn't have the size correct before. At least in this video the new size has an estimate of the error with it.

The New Horizons probe is now well past Pluto and heading further into the Kuiper Belt, where it is planned to study at least two other objects. We have not seen most of the data from the Pluto/Charon Flyby, it is still being sent back but by the much slower link. It will be coming in the next couple of months. The only other object to be snapped is one of Pluto's tiny moons, Nix: perhaps other moons will follow? You can see the images here, just 25 miles in diameter and here for further images of Pluto-Charon.

It is interesting that the funding to go to those other two KBO objects has not yet be obtained.

New Horizons has shot off on its projected route. There is little else for it to do, as it can't stop and turn around. They even have some fuel left to slightly change course should that be needed. This has been planned for quite some time, I don't think they need funding. Perhaps they hope that Kuiper Belt objects they are going to fly past will provide reason to send another probe there.

I think the additional funding would be for the staff on earth, however, I don't see why it should cost much more just to get the data even if no one analyzes it. It would be years from now anyway before New Horizons reaches those objects.

NASA funds specific projects as specified in the grant application. The New Horizons project must have been funded well before launch (just some 10 years ago). There are already some detailed images of Pluto arriving (see 21 July image of Pluto's mountains).

Pluto has fleshed out more in my imagination since that flyby mission. It is interesting that they did not build a better data transmission technology since it will take a year to get the full data back.