Pluto’s Closeup Will Be Awesome Based On Jupiter Pics From New Horizons Spacecraft

universetoday.com ^ | on December 2, 2014 | Elizabeth Howell

[BenLurkin]

The spacecraft has been sleeping quietly for weeks in its last great hibernation before the dwarf planet close encounter in July. On Saturday (Dec. 6), the NASA craft will open its eyes and begin preparations for that flyby.

How cool will those closeups of Pluto and its moons look? A hint comes from a swing New Horizons took by Jupiter in 2007 en route. It caught a huge volcanic plume erupting off of the moon Io, picked up new details in Jupiter’s atmosphere and gave scientists a close-up of a mysterious “Little Red Spot.”

[BenLurkin]

An eruption from the Tvashtar volcano on Io, Jupiter’s moon, in several different wavelength images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2007. The left image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) shows lava glowing in the night. At top right, the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) spotted sulfur and sulfor dioxide deposits on the sunny side of Io. The remaining image from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) shows volcanic hotspots on Io’s surface. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

[Veggie Todd]

Can it see Uranus?

[wastedyears]

I see what you did there.

[BenLurkin]

Only if you are praying to Mecca

[apillar]

I'm guessing that there won't be a whole lot to see on Pluto, it will most likely appear like some of the moons of Saturn, basically a large white ball of frozen gases and rock. But it will nice to finally round out our “picture album” of all the planets in the solar system (and yes I know Pluto got downgraded to proto-planet status, but I went to school when we still had nine planets and Pluto will always be a planet in my mind.)

[fhayek]

For all the billions of dollars of technology, it still probably doesn’t know Uranus from a hole in the ground.

[Huskrrrr]

My home planet. According to my wife (occasionally), men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but I’m from Pluto.

[BenLurkin]

Well, that’s nice of her.

Remind her that you’ll be glad to send her to the moon.

[CivilWarBrewing]

I still don’t understand why we are surrounded by these huge clumps of dirt and gases in deep space. There’s got to be a reason for all of this.

[Huskrrrr]

I will!!

[COBOL2Java]

[ravenwolf]

No wonder God brought Adam to earth.

[Politicalkiddo]

I remember watching a documentary some years ago about Pluto, and they think that it may become liquid as its orbit comes closest to the sun. If that’s the case, that would be really interesting and exciting.

[Moonman62]

I’m guessing that there won’t be a whole lot to see on Pluto, it will most likely appear like some of the moons of Saturn, basically a large white ball of frozen gases and rock.

...

Or it will look similar to Neptune’s moon, Triton, since they are considered to have formed similarly, are almost the same size, and Triton was captured rather than formed around Neptune.

Seeing the entire Pluto system will be something. How can such a small dwarf planet have so many moons?

I don’t think Pluto will be all white, since we already have a low resolution image of Pluto that shows otherwise.

[PeteePie]

[Bubba_Leroy]

[kidd]

Here is the view of Pluto from the Hubble telescope:

So it won't be a white ball, but frozen gases or rock should be expected.

The big difference is that Pluto will be the first object viewed up-close that is from the outer part of the solar system. It could be quite different from the gas giants and rocky planets of the inner solar system.

Factoid: Some of the ashes from the discoverer of Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, are in the satellite that will pass by Pluto.

[sphinx]

And Obama will grant amnesty and a pathway to citizenship to its residents.

[Lee'sGhost]

Disgusting Klingons!

[mikrofon]

“That’s no moon ....”