New Horizons: Near Encounter Phase Options

[Habukaz]

I don't think so; I haven't seen anything. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't any more press conferences before September, when new images and other data start coming down in great amounts.

[john_s]

These strips are a bonus byproduct of the selective compressed downlinks that we did shortly after the flyby- something about the way the downlink was commanded gave us the first 64 rows of the next image after the one we requested. They provide an intriguing sneak peek of unknown territory in these cases.

John

[Bill Harris]

A "sneak peak of unknown territory"-- I like that description. It makes us giddy just like kids before Christmas...

--Bill

[Ian R]

John, thanks so much for providing a quick explanation!

[fredk]

Very subtle Charon crescent in the new pics. Here's a bandpass filtered and stretched version:

I suppose we're mainly seeing the very thin lit crescent - no sign of atmosphere here. This is as expected, of course.

[nprev]

FORUM NOTICE: Since NH has completed all of its Pluto system observations, this thread for the near encounter phase will close tomorrow (1 Aug). To keep the threads at moderate lengths in order to facilitate searchability as the data download progresses over the coming year or so, new ones will be periodically opened until it's all down.

EDIT: This thread will be closed in the near future.

[Bill Harris]

I am working on a "Poster Session" of the geomorphology of Pluto. This is, of course, a work-in-progress and new images are up at:

https://univ.smugmug.com/New-Horizons-Mission/PlutoCharon/

--Bill

[Herobrine]

I unwrapped the haze from Pluto in the newly released LORRI full-disk images.

That's a full 360 degrees.
It's hard to make anything out of it with the lower resolution compared to the earlier three, combined with the uneven lighting around the disk.
Here's a more horizontally compressed version.

Those both cover 0 to 15 pixels above the surface.

Here's some numbers about things; accuracy is probably within a pixel.
Treating lor_0299323899 as the base image.
Pluto center (pixels; center of top-left pixel is 0.5, 0.5): 412.125, 483.75
Pluto radius (pixels): 122ish
lor_0299323929's offset (pixels): 75, -23.75

[Habukaz]

For Sky & Telescope, Stern wrote that

Regarding Pluto, we found [...] possibly even evidence for subsurface liquids.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-n...pluto-073120154

Is this about lower parts of the nitrogen glacier(s) at Sputnik plain, or something else we haven't been told about yet?

[neo56]

Here is a montage I made with zooms on the major landmarks in the region of Sputnik Planum, along with informal names used by New Horizons team.

[alan]

Rough track of 250 m/pixel images using NASA eyes, the southern end may overlap parts of the the 7-frame mosaic we have down.


ETA: 70 m/pixel track


The 120 m/pixel track is just west of the 70 m/pixel track, perhaps with some overlap.

[nprev]

FORUM NOTE: As previously mentioned we've established new topics for the post-encounter phase of New Horizons as follows, and they're going live now. There will probably be chronological breaks in these as this process continues for the next year or more:

Pluto Surface Observations

Pluto Atmospheric Observations

Charon Surface Observations

Pluto System Small Moons

Reminder that there's also a Pluto System Cartography thread for discussions related to that subject.

This thread will close in the near future as discussions migrate to these new topics.

Thanks for your patience as we attempt to make the massive data return from NH as organized (and therefore searchable) as possible for everyone.