Pluto Surface Observations 3: NH Post-Encounter Phase, 1 Feb 2016- TBD |
Pluto Surface Observations 3: NH Post-Encounter Phase, 1 Feb 2016- TBD |
Jun 7 2016, 03:35 AM
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#61
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Member Group: Members Posts: 495 Joined: 12-February 12 Member No.: 6336 |
5 points each to qraal and AndyG for the convection cell suggestions above, one month before the hamster escaped the cage..... er should be:
The idea got officially recognized. (UMSF takes no responsibility for and will not be liable if the recipient tries to use said points to bribe their professor, reviewers, spouse or said hamster.) |
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Jun 20 2016, 05:29 AM
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#62
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Member Group: Members Posts: 568 Joined: 20-April 05 From: Silesia Member No.: 299 |
-------------------- Free software for planetary science (including Cassini Image Viewer).
http://members.tripod.com/petermasek/marinerall.html |
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Jun 20 2016, 05:05 PM
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#63
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Member Group: Members Posts: 244 Joined: 2-March 15 Member No.: 7408 |
The weekend release actually included the last 3 frames of that strip to contain part of Pluto's surface
as well as new departure frames. http://mc.herobrinesarmy.com/soc/2016-06-19_thumbs.html Edit 2016-06-21: Changed "Friday" to "weekend" since the server dates indicate they were put up on Sunday. |
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Jun 20 2016, 08:25 PM
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#64
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
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Jun 21 2016, 05:44 PM
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#66
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1887 Joined: 20-November 04 From: Iowa Member No.: 110 |
Modeling glacial flow on and onto Pluto's Sputnik Planum
QUOTE The flow model developed is used here to qualitatively answer some questions motivated by observed glacial flow features found on Sputnik Planum. We find that the wavy transverse dark features found along the northern shoreline of Sputnik Planum may be a transitory imprint of shallow topography just beneath the ice surface suggesting the possibility that a major shoreward flow event happened relatively recently within the last few hundred years. Model results also support the interpretation that the prominent darkened features resembling flow lobes observed along the eastern shoreline of the Sputnik Planum basin may be a result of wet nitrogen glacial ice flowing into the basin from the pitted highlands of eastern Tombaugh Regio.
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Jun 21 2016, 10:12 PM
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#67
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
Herobrine - thanks for the comprehensive reply. I can't see Charon in the ones I've looked at carefully.
alan - thanks for the interesting quote. I'd like to know what lies behind the speculation about timescales. Is the hundred-ish year estimate a presumption that these are seasonal phenomena? |
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Jun 29 2016, 10:04 PM
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#68
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1887 Joined: 20-November 04 From: Iowa Member No.: 110 |
The hundred year estimate is based on how long it takes for the features to fade in simulations.
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Jul 1 2016, 11:35 AM
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#69
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Member Group: Members Posts: 244 Joined: 2-March 15 Member No.: 7408 |
Here's an animation of the Pluto system approach, starting 2015-01-25 and ending 2015-07-13, played at a constant rate of 391,520 times actual speed (with the exception of a jump forward 1 1/2 seconds in, where 67 days pass in 1 second).
It includes LORRI observations from 139 different points in time, all aligned to the background star field. The JPEGs from the SOC site were used. This shows the view from New Horizons looking in a fixed direction during the approach. The field of view in the animation is about 1.1 x 0.9 degrees. (Click above for giant GIF) It starts as a pair of dots in the top-right corner. The animation appears choppy at times (it even freezes for 3 seconds at one point), due to differences in the amount of time between observations. The version above draws each frame over the previous ones, attempting to preserve stars and the disks of Pluto and Charon from previous frames (using a terrible algorithm I wrote), to leave trails of the binary planet. It's at the native resolution of the LORRI frames, so the animation is very large, dimension-wise. It clocks in at under a megabyte, though, due to the fact that only a small part of the image changes in each frame. The alignment to the background star field was done visually, by a combination of a program I wrote (which got over half of the frames rotated to the same orientation for me) and manual measuring, rotating, and aligning of each frame. For some frames, I could only detect one background star, and had to estimate the Pluto-Charon barycenter and use that as a second point so I could find the orientation of the frame. I stopped at the frame I stopped at because I couldn't detect any stars in any of the frames from next two observation times. A smart person probably would have used available SPICE kernels to figure out the orientations and do the alignment for everything, saving weeks of effort. Maybe I'll be a smart person some day. Here are all of the frames drawn together. (Click for full size, 3974x3197) There's also a version that draws each entire frame over the previous one, replacing whatever was there before, so it doesn't leave trails. In a few frames where parts of Pluto and Charon from the previous frame weren't covered by the new frame, I manually erased them. That version is available here, but be advised that this version is 14 MiB. The other version was much smaller because it didn't preserve all of the small changes to the background with each frame. Edit: Added more information and a link to a second version |
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Jul 9 2016, 05:50 PM
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#70
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Member Group: Members Posts: 529 Joined: 19-February 05 Member No.: 173 |
Herobrine-- Mind if I share your cool image sequence of Pluto and Charon just above on my social media? If yes, how do you want to be credited?
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Jul 11 2016, 06:14 PM
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#71
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Member Group: Members Posts: 244 Joined: 2-March 15 Member No.: 7408 |
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Jul 12 2016, 04:27 AM
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#72
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Member Group: Members Posts: 529 Joined: 19-February 05 Member No.: 173 |
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Jul 13 2016, 02:28 PM
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#73
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 12 Joined: 26-August 15 Member No.: 7733 |
Here's an animation of the Pluto system approach, starting 2015-01-25 and ending 2015-07-13, played at a constant rate of 391,520 times actual speed (with the exception of a jump forward 1 1/2 seconds in, where 67 days pass in 1 second). Really love the way Charon 'corkscrews' around Pluto in the GIF |
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Jul 20 2016, 09:38 AM
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#74
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 57 Joined: 13-February 06 From: Brisbane, Australia Member No.: 679 |
Woohoo!
It was pretty obvious after those close ups. Amazing to see nitrogen in such quantity. Pluto's suggested "Warm Phase" with a denser atmosphere and liquid N2 would be akin to Titan's "Cold Phase" which some models have suggested - when Titan's atmosphere collapses and the surface becomes super-reflective, temperatures hovering around 63 K. Not unlike a Pluto Thaw... 5 points each to qraal and AndyG for the convection cell suggestions above, one month before the hamster escaped the cage..... er should be: The idea got officially recognized. (UMSF takes no responsibility for and will not be liable if the recipient tries to use said points to bribe their professor, reviewers, spouse or said hamster.) |
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Jul 29 2016, 06:28 PM
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#75
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1887 Joined: 20-November 04 From: Iowa Member No.: 110 |
I haven't caught a recent update on the progress of the download of the encounter data. Has it been completed?
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