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New Horizons: Pre-launch, launch and main cruise, Pluto and the Kuiper belt
djellison
post Apr 19 2014, 05:30 AM
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QUOTE (Explorer1 @ Apr 18 2014, 08:33 PM) *
Pluto and Charon are already visible as pixels from NH,


They're visible as more than that in ground based observatories.

'Close' to Pluto though NH may already be, and amazing though LORRI is - for KBO searching it doesn't come close to the capabilities of larger ground based observatories for large area surveys.
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Alan Stern
post Apr 19 2014, 11:15 PM
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What Doug said is exactly right.
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Greg Hullender
post Apr 27 2014, 08:30 PM
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Are they good enough to reduce the uncertainty in the position of Pluto? I remember a discussion here some years ago that NH might need to take photos over a very large area due to uncertainty about the exact position of Pluto. I've always hated the thought of wasting any precious photos on blank space, so I keep hoping that as NH gets closer, it itself will provide better data. I know I've asked before, but I don't think it was ever possible to give a definitive answer.

One year out, how do you feel about the photo plan?
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Alan Stern
post Apr 28 2014, 10:55 AM
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New Horizons will begin conducting optical navigation to home in on Pluto this summer. ALMA Pluto interferometry is also going into the mix on the orbit solution. Additional optical nav imagery from NH begins to regularly stream in in January.
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tfisher
post Apr 29 2014, 06:50 AM
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Are there plans to re-measure the source stars for past Pluto occultations, with ALMA or otherwise? It seems like any improvement of the astrometry of those stars ought to translate one-to-one as an improvement in knowledge of the location of Pluto on the date of the occultation.
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Alan Stern
post Apr 29 2014, 10:12 AM
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No such plans, but that's a novel idea. I don't believe it's been suggested previously.
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remcook
post Apr 29 2014, 01:07 PM
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I guess GAIA is too late for that?
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Holder of the Tw...
post Apr 29 2014, 02:59 PM
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GAIA will probably observe all those stars multiple times over the next year, but in order to set them in a reference frame it needs to add in all the other stellar observations it's been making, particularly quaser locations. Or at least that's the plan for the overall project. So my guess would be, yeah, too late to start all that now. But it might be worth checking with ESA all the same.
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Bjorn Jonsson
post Sep 22 2014, 09:18 PM
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Now that New Horizons is very late in its cruise phase and things are happening at an increasingly rapid pace it's time for a new main NH thread here. The relatively recent late cruise thread is here.
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