New Horizons, Pluto and the Kuiper belt Options

[alan]

This montage of giant Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, replete with the spectacular Tvashtar polar plume, was assembled from New Horizons imagery.

http://www.pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPer...011708_2_lg.jpg

Odd, I don't remember Jupiter having a Great Blue Spot

[Greg Hullender]

We did a pilot search in 005-2006 to prove the technique but Pluto is against the center of the Milky Way in Sagittarius This makes useful searches too time consuming-- the starfields are too dense! So we have always planned to begin in 2011 when Pluto moves out of the worst of it.

-Alan

Alan, I'm sure you guys have already thought of this, but have you considered using NH itself to help the search? I note that NH can already image Pluto, so it stands a reasonable chance of imaging promising KBOs too. Using the baseline between NH and Earth ought to lead to much larger movements of the objects than just watching the area from Earth and comparing results from year to year. I don't know how you guys do these searches, but if I were writing the program myself, I'd think larger moves would be a lot easier to detect.

Failing that, given that the camera is so good, has anyone thought about trying to do a parallax measurement to someplace far away -- like the Pleiades? It's a long way to Pluto and not a heck of a lot else to do on the way. :-)

--Greg

[djellison]

Alan, I'm sure you guys have already thought of this, but have you considered using NH itself to help the search?

Been there, done that, search this forum for the reasons why it wont work.

Doug

[ugordan]

Odd, I don't remember Jupiter having a Great Blue Spot

I, on the other hand, don't remember anyone saying that was a natural color composite...

[Alan Stern]

Been there, done that, search this forum for the reasons why it wont work.

Doug

Doug is right on, that was discussed previously.

However, John Spencer pointed out to me that I'd oversimplified the original reply I made on when we will search for KBOs: In essence, Pluto doesn't really clear the galactic center star fields until 2012, but to quote John and give you a little more detail about why we begin in 2011: "Our advantage waiting till around 2011 to resume the search is that the search area is MUCH smaller than it was in 2004, so we can hit each spot with a lot more images to subtract the background stars." 2012 just gets better, of course, as the search area decreases more and PLuto is then clear of the dense star fields.

-Alan

[Greg Hullender]

Ah, you did already answer this in 2006. Oops.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=76307

I'm still curious, though, if it could be used to get parallax measurements of stars or other objects, using the (now) 10AU baseline.

--Greg

[JRehling]

Ah, you did already answer this in 2006. Oops.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=76307

I'm still curious, though, if it could be used to get parallax measurements of stars or other objects, using the (now) 10AU baseline.

--Greg

Earth gives you 2 AU of baseline, so you just have to beat the resolution of the best Earth-based telescopes by that factor (now 5... eventually 15-25). HST has about 10x LORRI's resolution, so we aren't there yet, but will be later.

[volcanopele]

Raw and calibrated files from the Jupiter encounter is now available on the PDS. Now don't all rush to download while I am getting 770 KB/sec. Now, I really should find a way to get these files ingested into ISIS:

http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/missions/newhorizons/index.html

[ugordan]

Great news, thanks for the heads up, VP!

[volcanopele]

You can all now go ahead and download I waiting till tonight to download the MVIC and LEISA data (now have all the LORRI stuff). It was interfering with my Halo game.

[elakdawalla]

Thanks very much for the heads up, Jason! Working on the MVIC data now...

I still had all the LORRI stuff on my machine from its premature release in May, so I'm now uploading the IMG2PNGed versions to the Amazon S3 server. As soon as it's up and I've got the file permissions set, I'll post a link to an index file for y'all.

--Emily

[volcanopele]

Keep in mind that not all the data was released last May. At lot of the late encounter data (LORRI data volume 3 I do believe) was not in the volumes released then.

[Greg Hullender]

HST has about 10x LORRI's resolution, so we aren't there yet, but will be later.

That's the piece of data I was missing. Strictly speaking, I guess I really need to compare Hipparcos' resolution with Lorri's -- unless HST is actually better than Hipparcos. Also, I suppose it's worth pointing out that HST is heavily booked for other things, while Lorri really hasn't got a lot to do for the next several years -- and for many years after it passes Pluto.

With a 2AU baseline, Hipparcos got measures as far as 1600 light years. I think Alan suggested that New Horizons would still be functioning when it exited the Kuiper Belt, many years from now. With a 40 or even 50 AU baseline, I like to think that Lorri could get rather good Parallax measures to very remote things. Maybe not as far as 40,000 light years, but it'd be nice to know for sure.

Anyway, the lack of any "parallax program" for NH suggests that it just doesn't work. As you say, even if Lorri is very impressive, it may just not be quite impressive enough. But if it's just that no one has looked at it yet, it'd be nice to know what the numbers come out to.

--Greg

[ugordan]

Think of the downlink bandwidth available for parallax observations at those distances and the available power for LORRI. NH may be alive long after exiting the Kuiper belt, but that doesn't mean the cameras will be.

[elakdawalla]

Keep in mind that not all the data was released last May. At lot of the late encounter data (LORRI data volume 3 I do believe) was not in the volumes released then.

Drat. You're right. Back to the beginning then.

Anybody else trying to use wget to get these files and getting "403 forbidden" errors?

--Emily