New Horizons: Approach Phase, OpsNav - 25 January 15 to 28 June 15 Options

[Guest_Steve5304_*]

Using last 2 images available from June 27. You can see that "stripey" appearance on Pluto for this one.

[attachment=36333:June_27_...enlarged.jpg]

I see a planetwide stripe or channel or fault right across the middle. Almost in a Yin/Yang or tennisball shape

That does not seem to be an artifact. It looks like a planet-wide feature north to south and curves far to the right. Somebody else have a look tell me what they think. Or maybe its paradeolia but I think I can make it out in the last 3 images posted !!


Say it is a real feature, Which im pretty sure it is... What sort of fluid from the poles where it is coming from would cut that sort of channel on this frozen planet, there should be zero tectonics on Pluto. And its too curvy to be a accretion belt.

[Phil Stooke]

You see a stripe... I see it too. But please don't give in to the temptation to describe it as a channel. There are a lot of other possibilities, and remember this stripe would be 200 km across or so. It could just be a random collection of spots (like a 'river' in printed text - look at a printed page from a distance and you see winding white lines made up of spaces between words which your eyes and brain join up) - it could be a wind streak like markings on Mars, it could be a range of mountains like the Appennines on the Moon. Right now it's just a line.


Phil

[fred_76]

I do confirm what Bjorn noticed. Nix and Hydra are clearly visible on the 27th bin x1 stacked images as shown below. The indication near Kerberos is a ground star.




Fred

[fred_76]

Nix and Hydra from the bin x1 images of the 23rd June :

[FOV]

Lots of albedo variations. Pluto is really impressing. Charon too.

[Gerald]

Background stars can be identified in the 1x1-binned images in many cases, at least if stacked:

This sequence of 22 frames is an excerpt of the "OpNav Campaign 4, LORRI 1X1" images:

I've tried to register the images by background stars (actually by writing and running an according software).

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Background stars can be identified in the 1x1-binned images in many cases, at least if stacked

This is great and may turn out to be very useful for figuring out the exact image orientation once the resolution gets too high for both Pluto and Charon to fit within LORRI's field of view (can't wait for that to happen!).

[EDG]

EDIT: Nvm, wrong thread, sorry!

[volcanopele]

Just a gentle reminder that images taken after June 28 are being discussed in the Pluto System Encounter Thread. I've moved a few posts over to that thread.

[fred_76]

What is the object that appears on frames 4-6 (circled in the clipped version of the animation below)? There's a similar object that appears once in frame 7 (circled, with question mark), but in a slightly different location. The object in frames 4-6 clearly seems to be an object moving downwards. Camera artifact? Other known satellite? Random KBO drifting past?

[attachment=35267:LORRI_4x..._Clipped.gif]

It looks like a variable star.