New Horizons Pluto System Final Approach, 28 Jun-13 Jul 15 Options

[surbiton]

Correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't the position of the barycentre relative to Pluto be constantly changing, given this is a sextuple-body system. Wouldn't that be responsible for generating tidal forces in the equatorial zone?

Why ? Since Pluto and Charon are tidally locked, the barycentre is always on the straight line between the two
and always stays at the same place relative to Pluto and Charon.

[elakdawalla]

GAH the international media sat at APL for six hours this afternoon listening for tidbits of news and asking when the new pictures would be released and they said they didn't know and then they released them an hour after everybody left!!

(Awesome pictures though)

[Bill Harris]

Nice pics at a million.

Be wary-- if you use an older Web Browser, some NASA.gov site have a "reject" line in the script that may put your Browser in a "thumb twiddling" mode.

Mongo only pawn in game of life...

--Bill

[Guest_Steve5304_*]

That pic is just a rehash of 7-11 pic. No new pic yet

[stevelu]

It's from the same day, but later on. It shows new terrain and is a bit sharper.

[Herobrine]

That pic is just a rehash of 7-11 pic. No new pic yet

I'm fairly certain that is a newer and much closer photo; there were five LORRI shots of Charon scheduled for July 11. You'd only seen the second one before this was released.
The earlier one was 20 km/pixel; this one is probably closer to 15 km/pixel.

[Guest_Steve5304_*]

That bugger is going damn quick

[Decepticon]

Is that Chasms rotating into view or will the flyby miss it?

[John Broughton]

Why ? Since Pluto and Charon are tidally locked, the barycentre is always on the straight line between the two
and always stays at the same place relative to Pluto and Charon.

Are you saying the barycentre stays EXACTLY in the same relative position to Pluto and Charon, despite other bodies in the system spending most of their time at different position angles?

[JohnVV]

Correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't the position of the barycentre relative to Pluto be constantly changing, given this is a sextuple-body system. Wouldn't that be responsible for generating tidal forces in the equatorial zone?

this would be SO SMALL as to be not a issue

Phobos and Deimos move Mars's barycenter by only 20 centimeters
that is why the NAIF spice kernels use mars geographic center ONLY

[nprev]

<MOD MODE>

And that's the end of this barycenter discussion, please. Refer to rules 2.1 and 2.5.

</MOD>

[alk3997]

New Horizons’ newest images reveal Pluto’s largest moon Charon to be a world of chasms and craters.
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/charon-s-chasms-and-craters

The dark area at Charon's north pole seems to have concentric rings around it. They aren't circular rings but seem to be complete oval-ish.

I'm wondering if that dark area isn't an impact basin with the rings a frozen record of the impact?

Let's see if the rings are really there in the next few days.

Andy

[zamboni]

Been lurking for a while...thought I might contribute.

I have been playing around with the NASA Eyes app (http://eyes.jpl.nasa.gov/eyes-on-pluto.html), and I saw Bjorn's video of the approach, so I decided to try and combine the two. I'm not sure if it is quite accurate though. I cued things to the position of pluto and the Sun eclipse but the angles doesn't quite match. The data from the Eyes app may be not up to date (seeing they dont seem to have an accurate Pluto terrain map. I had to rotate Bjorn's video about 5 degrees.

Here is the link if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/u5PudsMAbfc

[PDP8E]

zamboni,
W O W
(and thanks to EYES...)

[zamboni]

zamboni,
W O W
(and thanks to EYES...)

Thanks, something isn't right with my overlay of his video. If I try to match the EYEs map with the updated Map of Bjorn's I need to rotate the video -65 degrees, and the sun position at the end is totally off. I need to investigate further