Posted on 02/05/2015 7:23:34 AM PST by kidd
Here we go! New Horizons is now on approach and today on the anniversary of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaughs birth the spacecraft has sent back its first new images of the Pluto system. The images arent Earth-shattering (Pluto-shattering?) but they do represent the mission is closing in on its target, and will allow the New Horizons engineers to precisely aim the spacecraft as it continues its approach.
The photos were taken with the telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on January 25 and 27, 2015.
Pluto is finally becoming more than just a pinpoint of light, said Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
LOL kind of anticlimactic but they’ll get better pretty quickly.
More than a pinpoint of light. Fer sure. Now it’s a blob of few pixels.
Still not close enough to take detailed photographs.
July seems so close and yet so far away now.
Why isn’t it wearing pants?
Brian Williams will be there...count on it!
July 14 will be the closest approach
Sometime in May the pictures from Hew Horizons will be better than those from Hubble.
This was primarily a test of the camera system and is the first in a series of photos that will be used for trajectory corrections
#DontDissPlutoBro
Pluto Ping!
Okay, so we have a pic of a cotton ball in a oil drum at midnight.................
That’s kinda my thought.
What, no URANUS jokes? You people are slippin’. :)
At this point- so? what? When it gets a little closer there will be something to talk about.
2015 is a big year for exploration of the solar system.
New Horizons is the biggest of them all. Space junkies appreciate this stuff.
I am happy that the New Horizons craft did not photograph Uranus.
The NASA folks are talking about clouds & weather on Pluto. This will get interesting.
I’m guessing very thin clouds at most.
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