New Horizon's distance from Pluto drops below 500 million km today. The main thread here has been active since before launch and until today.
Today is an appropriate day for a new thread and there are also less than 14 months until Pluto arrival (time flies!). The coming months will see more spacecraft activity than in recent years with optical navigation images of Pluto/Charon, images of Neptune etc.
The next 14 months are going to be interesting to say the least.
Interesting is an understatement. This is going to be a fun year. To think, in July 2015 we'll be the first humans to ever see Pluto.
Yes, and to think, 2014 is the last year when no one knows what Pluto and it's satellites really look like.
I was looking at http://www.yaohua2000.org/cgi-bin/New%20Horizons.pl website yesterday and noted the distance was nearly down to 500. Time flies when your having fun.
Mr. Stern, I would like to thank you so much for New Horizons. What you and your team have done and are doing, it's a privilege to see what amazing will come of this.
Thank you,
James Sontag
I am eagerly waiting to update my two textures for Pluto and Charon
http://imgbox.com/Pj5E8Fa6
A question on behalf of Alan: New Horizons accomplished a trajectory correction maneuver yesterday. Someone on Twitter suggested this was the deepest-space-ever rocket burn. Is it? When/where was the last Voyager TCM?
Nice piece on our optical navigation plans, written by Emily following last week's science team mtg: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/07181415-new-horizons-op-nav-campaign.html
Which reminds me, I got an answer to my question above https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/489106888777535488: The last TCMs of the Voyagers:
Voyager 1 = 1980-312/04:24 GMT after Saturn Flyby
Voyager 2 = 1989-233/15:14 GMT after Neptune Flyby
It's a very busy little system down to the limit of Hubble resolution, I'd be quite surprised if there aren't a number of other chunks of debris to add into the mix as these opnav campaigns proceed. Any redundancy in the obs campaign for as-yet unresolved moons/rings???
https://twitter.com/NewHorizons2015/status/492314148034711553/photo/1
Getting ever so closer... Pluto-Charon from 400 million km away
a close up
http://www.imagebam.com/image/4547a6340942051
Cleaned (by subtracting several intersects of horizontally displaced versions), cleaned 4x magnified cropped, and slightly enhanced version of the latter:
Here is a press release about the radio telescope observations of Pluto & Charon using ALMA:
http://public.nrao.edu/news/pressreleases/alma-pluto
Neat two-frame animation of the orbital motion
Movie of Charon orbiting Pluto from LORRI images covering almost 1 full rotation.
http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/small-bodies/nh_opnav_pluto-charon_2014-07.html
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20140807.php
Looks like a clock running backwards in time... appropriate for a spacecraft visiting never-before-seen ancient frozen worlds.
By my calculation, an observer on New Horizons will "see" Pluto at an apparent magnitude of 9.01 at the moment. It will brighten to below Mag. 9 by the end of the week with 400 million kilometers to go. (Of course you can't see an object at mag. 9 with the naked eye. It has to be Mag. 6 or less in a dark sky)
I just thought you might like that bit of trivia.
As I said in another thread, it is probably better to have this kind of encounter later in mankinds exploratory journey, so that we can not only take advantage of the better technology available on board, but also the amazing capabilities of the internet and social media, to engage those who are simply 'interested' as opposed to only those who are directly 'involved'.So that one may become the other.
Reading through the latest 'significant events' page on the Cassini website reveals that Cassini took three ISS optical navigation images of Pluto against background stars last Sunday (24th) to help with ephemeris data in pinning down Pluto's exact position for the New Horizons flyby.
IIRC this was undertaken earlier in the mission, but the data were lost due to a saving event.
It's great to see the co-operation that exists between the teams on various missions. Hopefully it helped!
The images in question are N00228384, N00228385 and N00228386.
It looks as though Cassini was commanded to 'stare' at Pluto so that background stars move relative to it, rather than vice-versa, as several bright stars move 'S/SW' between the frames. However there's so many cosmic ray hits/hot pixels in there, I can't obviously see the target. (I assume Pluto's position is well-enough known that it occupies the exact centre of the image)
No doubt the engineering team can clean up the images with dark frame subtraction, and pull Pluto out of the noise.
I'm amazed that Cassini's cameras are of use in this regard, given the 4 billion km range to Pluto!
Debuting today! Pluto Picture of the Day (PPOD): Daily pix from/about New Horizons, Pluto, and more! http://www.boulder.swri.edu/ppod/
Bookmark it if you like it.
-Alan
Yes, sorry Gordan, I've been looking at the latest three images from last week.
To my knowledge, the effort to aid the New Horizons mission has now involved Hubble, Cassini, Subaru, Magellan and the Canada/France Hawaii telescope. A very heartening collaborative effort to achieve the biggest 'bang for the buck' at Pluto and beyond.
Bookmarked - thanks!
Great to know we're invited along on the ride.
Those images that finally start to exceed Hubble resolution will be phenomenal - I wonder what we'll see?
When the resolution gets down to about 100 km per pixel, it might look something like the maps David Tholin, Marc Buie and Keith Horne came up with and published in this paper:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~buie/biblio/pub015.pdf
Thanks to the work Tholin and others put into making those observations and deciphering the results, we already have a better look at one hemisphere of Pluto (and Charon) than Hubble can give us. I'm looking forward to seeing how well they match up to direct pictures from New Horizons. I'm expecting they'll match pretty well.
I read that Alan Stern showed an image at a recent event of New York City at the best resolution that New Horizons will achieve at Pluto. Does anyone have a link to this? My Google search failed. Thanks.
An interesting and detailed report about the comments of Alan Stern about the final preparations of New Horizons.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2590/1
“Beginning in May, we exceed Hubble resolution,” Stern said, a reference to the best images of Pluto taken to date. “It will get better week by week” through the July flyby.
PBS better air a "Pluto All Night" special!
Given the bit-rate from that distance, it might have to be a "Pluto All Month"...
Actually, though, that's something I'm curious about--plans for public broadcast of the encounter. Alan, have you guys developed anything detailed on this yet?
Outstanding!
Suggestion: You should invite noted space journalists & bloggers to participate; there are many such in the present amateur space enthusiast community!
UMSF has been riding along with New Horizons since before she launched.
It's worth going back to http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=675&view=findpost&p=5213 and reading the first few posts.
In fact read back through the 110+ pages as we followed the adventure.
Thanks to Alan Stern for giving us his insights and feedback throughout the mission.
I second Nick's suggestion. Maybe there's some good value of "space science's finest communicators" (many of them to be found here) getting a chance to share that unique moment in July next year. They can do some great outreach and best of all, they're free!
I should know better than to try to teach the teacher. Great, looking very much forward to the plans; thanks, Alan!
A question from a layman:
New Horizons is currently in Sagittarius as viewed from the Earth, and given its relative proximity to Pluto and the relatively low gravity of the Pluto system, it seems likely from the geometry that it will continue in that direction (roughly towards the centre of the galaxy). I realise that it may be diverted to a Kuiper body object, which may change that bearing)
Given that we have a solar orbital velocity of 200km/s around the galaxy, if we superimpose New Horizon's solar-centric velocity of 14.6km/s (towards Sagittarius), does this mean that NH will very gradually spiral towards the galactic centre? - or is that a naive idea?
It will very roughly move along a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_orbit around the galactic center.
But because the field of gravity of the Milky Way is poorly approximated by a mass point, instead better by a disk, the trajectory will additionally oscillate about the galactic plane.
LOONNNGGG time watcher, first time poster.....
I was telling my 7 year old son about New Horizons (he was born on the one-year aniversary of the launch). He was particulary interested in the remoteness of Pluto and was astonished when I told him about how the sun is much less bright way out there on the edge of the solar system. Does anyone have a good practical way of simulating the lighting conditions out there? For example, is the amount of available light similar to the moonlight on a full moon night? Thanks
Sure- sunlight is about 1000x fainter on Pluto than on Earth (~32x further from the sun, and the sun's brightness goes as 1/R^2). That sounds like a lot, but the human eye is amazingly adaptable- we can see fairly well in full moonlight, which is about a million times fainter than sunlight.
Illumination on Pluto is something like ordinary subdued indoor domestic lighting like you might have at home in the evening. If you have a camera which reports exposures settings you can check this- for a pair of similarly-exposed photos, illumination of the scene is proportional to (f-stop)^2/(exposure time). ["^2" means "squared"]
[edit] As an example, if you expose an outdoor scene at 1/250th second at f11, and an indoor scene (with the same ISO) at 1/8th second at f2, the brightness ratio of the two scenes is about 950x.
John
The Sun would be a point, not a disc, but still be over 200 times the brightness of the full moon (an average, given the elliptical orbit).
Phil Plait has a good article on this:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/03/15/bafact-math-how-bright-is-the-sun-from-pluto/
I believe it's about 250x brighter than a full moon. About 1/1500th as bright as the Sun at Earth.
Someone may want to check my maths on this....but....
One way to express it is with a camera. If you go outside with a DSLR and open the aperture fairly wide - you might get an exposure of, say, 1/4000th of a second ( the quickest exposure on many off the shelf consumer DSLR's )
Find a place where the same aperture results in an exposure of about 1/3rd of a second. That's how much darker it is on Pluto compared to the Earth.
Alternatively - it's like going from an aperture of F2 to F38....but without the added benefit of great depth of field
Doug
I guess, you intended to write "F1 to F38".
For the other values I got about the same.
Yeah - I as thinking of my 50mm F1.4 - but rounded up
A good way to simulate the brightness of the sun at pluto imho is when a solar eclipse at earth comes close to the totality phase.
I think about 15 to 10 minutes before totality arrives is just about the same brightness level at pluto..but this is only rough guess and depends on the eclipse geometry.
Could one do the math for this please ?
Shadows during this eclipse phase on earth are strange because of the thin sun sickle..shadows at pluto must be still more sharper with almost no penumbra visible.
Robert
A fun experiment would to be get a room and cover the windows so that only 1/1000 of the area is window is uncovered. That would give an idea of how bright it would be inside a house anyways.
In terms of a total solar eclipse I agree with Gerald it would be just a few seconds before totality. The exact time depends on the eclipse and the relative sizes of the sun and moon. Even then, the scattered light from outside totality would alter things. I have programmed some empirical formulae to get the sun's brightness depending on the eclipse magnitude (fraction of solar diameter covered), and the relative sizes of sun and moon. I'll try and locate them.
There would also be a time during daily twilight (say on a clear day) when the overall illumination of the ground would be 1/1000th of daytime. I'm guessing it would be about 30 minutes after sunset, with a solar elevation of -6 degrees.
The window experiment also sounds interesting. On a clear day the sky (without direct sunlight) has roughly 10% of the sun's light over the hemisphere. That would be over 20000 square degrees. Therefore if you have a window showing 200 square degrees of sky and no direct sun it might work. The diameter of the window would be about 15 degrees then, so one could stand about 4 times the width of the window away.
...yet another way to look at it: about as bright a full moon expanded to around 8 degrees in diameter.
I moved a bunch of posts to this thread from the http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=675.
This thread will be the main thread for what remains of NH's cruise phase (an amazingly short time really, I feel as if NH was recently launched but there are now almost 9 years since it was launched).
Today's awesome PPOD pic is at http://www.boulder.swri.edu/ppod/
Soon you can sign up for push notifications....
And EVEN BETTER! Here's Amanda's latest Postcard from Pluto! http://plutopostcards.tumblr.com/post/98173068433/this-is-one-of-the-coolest-serendipitous-things-to …
Enjoy!
PPOD/Pluto Picture of the Day now has an indexed archive! http://guinan.space.swri.edu/nhepo/archive_index
PPOD now allows you to sign up for push notifications. http://www.boulder.swri.edu/ppod/
Hey Alan, you've indicated before that the data from the Pluto flyby in July 2015 will trickle in slowly. Will we still get to see high res images come in as the approach happens or will we have to wait a bit?
I read an interview (somewhere, don't have the link on me!) where the plan is basically that some images from around CA (those worthy of being under the newspaper headlines) are going to be given priority in the downlink sequence. So although it will take ages to get everything down, there won't be a second agonizing wait for the best stuff after July.
Interesting to see the PPOD 9/28 artist view, in light of the earlier discussion of the 1/1000 Earth illumination appearance.
http://guinan.space.swri.edu/nhepo/archive/2014/09/28
One might consider some of the assumptions of atmospheric parameters that would go into such a visualization. This includes optical depths of gas and aerosols, as well as their scale heights. The vantage point of the viewer above the mean terrain height helps the depiction of the surface haze layer.
Reddit AMA with the New Horizons team, - Q&A by Alan Stern et al. with space enthusiasts
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2igklm/hi_i_am_alan_stern_head_of_nasas_new_horizons/
This is the first of 10 Infographics being produced for the mission in 2015, thought UMSFers would like seeing it hot off the press!
Looks great Alan! Getting so excited to see Pluto and Charon and the rest of the gang in the windshield.
Very nice, Alan. Thank you for sharing.
What blows my mind, is that, I don't think most people realize that we will be the first humans to ever see Pluto. Man, just thinking about that is crazy.
considering i had just turned 10 by Aug ( v2) and sep (v1 ) of 1977
when the Voyagers launched .....
that era was a "time"
the 1976 things and goings on
Viking
Voyager
some of the Mariner missions
All the astronomy books i could get my hands on were being OUTDATED by the time that a 8 to 12 year old could read them
Been seeing new worlds for the first time since Mariner 9.
Never, ever gets old. Not even a little bit.
Went to Pasadena from France on a B707 to be part of Planetfest 89 for VII Neptune encounter...was to be the last for a loooong time...and here we (nearly) are. Thank you Mr Stern and All...
Is there going to be another planetfest like gathering for the Pluto flyby?
I'm sure there will be.
Here in Australia, back in the day, Voyager was making its flyby through the Neptunian system.
Our ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) had a 2 hour special.
It was evening over here in Western Australia and we had a special public night (Monday) to
view Neptune, btw, I'm a member of the Astronomical Society of the South West.
So there we are, a tiny blue disc in our telescopes, and on the TV some mind blowing images of
Neptune.
I've only seen Pluto once via telescope, a 12.5" f6 Newt (superb optics btw). A dot amongst dots.
So much looking forward to the flyby. Shame we don't have the delta V for orbit.
KBO targets for New Horizons (other than Pluto and Charon, of course) found!
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/47/full/
Question - would the major targeting for such an object be done post Pluto system flyby, or (more propellant efficient, but perhaps more disruptive?) by tweaking the flyby parameters for a gravity assisted course correction?
Airbag
After the flyby. The science plan for the encounter is locked and loaded.
So, rough back-of-the-laptop calculation has a cruise time to KBO encounter of ~3.5 years. That's assuming constant speed, ~1 billion miles further to go. Here's to hoping a few more pop out of the woodwork!
Wonderful news and big congratulations to the team.
Does 'definitely reachable' mean the target(s) can be approached arbitrarily closely? Can we look forward to seeing the selected one in as much detail as Pluto and Charon?
EDIT: My question already answered by Emily http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/10151024-finally-new-horizons-has-a-kbo.html
To summarise - Yes, close range is well within reach fuel-wise, but because the target's orbit will not be as accurately determined as Pluto's it will be harder to optimise the flyby distance perfectly for science.
What would have been my next question is also answered. The definitely reachable target is a cold classical KBO.
Terrific news! Congratulations to all the team for their indefatigable efforts in finding a candidate KBO.
I can't imagine that funding for a mission extension will be too hard to negotiate come the time
A little early for image sequencing discussions perhaps, but assuming the object's orbit can be determined accurately enough, is NH capable of undertaking 'skeet-shoot' (as per Cassini at Enceladus) techniques for very close imaging, given the low-light levels and relative speed at closest approach?
Well I have to say it ...
I always had faith in them.
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2048&view=findpost&p=37681
Congratulations!
We'll soon see how similar Pluto is to Triton (or not as the case may be). Exciting times indeed.
They would most likely need to apply for Hubble time again. When someone inevitably writes a book on New Horizons they will have to mention the invaluable amount of help Hubble has done for the mission.
Mag 26.8 for PT1 ... according to Wikipedia, visible from 8m telescopes? They don't need hubble exclusively to track it?
I meant if they wanted to look for a scattered disk object like SFJCody suggested. Not PT1.
Incidentally, which telescope do you think would be able to find KBOs better, Hubble or the Webb?
We will probably try to track these guys from the ground. From our ground-based search campaign, we already have a huge amount of data covering the locations of these objects, from 6-meter and 8-meter telescopes, going back to 2011. These KBOs are too faint to have been *discovered* in those data, but now we know where look, we might be able to *recover* them from the images, and thus extend our knowledge of their orbits. We'll be working on that over the winter, and will also be considering future ground-based tracking observations. Future ground-based tracking won't be as precise as Hubble's, but may provide a useful supplement and backup to Hubble- we'll see.
John
John, this is probably a very premature question, but if JWST launches as currently scheduled could it too play a part in final pre-encounter position & size observations of PT1? Main reason I ask is that STScI is to be the controlling organization for both scopes, if I'm not mistaken.
Yes, quite possibly, *if* it launches in 2018- we certainly won't be counting on it! Keep in mind, of course, that PT1 isn't necessarily our final choice- the other two are still in the running.
John
The NH final wakeup coverage is live now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQL_cjI66C8. (began 0200 GMT/7 Dec)
EDIT: Also, here's a link to https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html. DSS43 at Canberra is currently listening for NH.
I have confirmation from a trusted source that telemetry is being received. Good morning, New Horizons!!!
EDIT: Comments indicate that wake-up telemetry was "fully nominal". Excellent and most welcome news!
On Pluto's Doorstep, NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Awakens for Encounter
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20141206.php
Excellent news. Does anybody know when we can expect the next set of LORRI images of the Pluto system?
you will find all the answers to your questions in Emily's blog:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/12031700-the-new-horizons-science.html
Nice overview of the mission (77 minute video) at this press conference back in November--see the link on this page under "Press Conferences from DPS 46, Tucson, Arizona, 9-14 November 2014":
Seminar for Science Writers: The New Horizons Encounter with Pluto in 2015
http://aas.org/media-press/archived-aas-press-conference-webcasts
That page will also eventually have webcasts of press conferences of the current AAS conference in Seattle.
Question please:
Where may one find diagrams of the planned NH Pluto survey coverage at different resolutions ? (ditto for the moons)
Thank you.
Emily did this recently. Very insightful.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/12031700-the-new-horizons-science.html
Thanks.
The tables are good, but I was looking for a diagram.
Presumably the regional hi-rez imaging will not cover the entire hemisphere ?
http://blogs.nasa.gov/mission-ames/wp-content/uploads/sites/217/2013/07/Best_Res.png
New Horizons is now 212778450 kilometers away from Pluto, from yaohua website.
http://www.yaohua2000.org/cgi-bin/New%20Horizons.pl
I have worried because our knowledge of Pluto's position is imprecise. Some long-ago posts had mentioned that NH would expect to waste some pictures (i.e. take pics of empty space) in order to be sure it really got all of Pluto. That has bothered me for several years now (I'm greedy), so my favorite tidbit from the update on the JHUAPL site was this:
“We need to refine our knowledge of where Pluto will be when New Horizons flies past it,” said Mark Holdridge, the New Horizons encounter mission manager from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. “The flyby timing also has to be exact, because the computer commands that will orient the spacecraft and point the science instruments are based on precisely knowing the time we pass Pluto – which these images will help us determine.”
Spacecraft operators also track New Horizons using radio signals from NASA’s Deep Space Network. But the “optical navigation” campaign that begins this month marks the first time pictures from New Horizons will be used to help pinpoint Pluto’s location.
Less than 200 million km to go.
New Horizons is now 199944087 kilometers away from Pluto.
http://www.yaohua2000.org/cgi-bin/New%20Horizons.pl
That's odd. We seem to be missing a few posts from this thread including Explorer1's useful link posted at 9:10 pm yesterday, 3rd Feb.
EDIT: This works if you go to 'members posts' for Explorer 1 and click on the link. (For some reason this copy of it doesn't.)
New link to Alan's latest status here:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/PI-Per...tive_01_23_2015
ADMIN: Now that the first Lorri OpNav image is in, several posts moved to the new http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=7970&hl= thread.
Another milestone coming up. 1 AU from Pluto tomorrow.
A hypothetical observer on New Horizons would see many bright stars in the general direction of Pluto, but Pluto itself is still a mere 7th magnitude object - barely discernable but brightening by -0.02 magnitude every day at this stage.
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