New Horizon Cameras Options

[Guest_vjkane2000_*]

I've been wondering what the focal lengths are for the two New Horizon cameras (Ralph and Lorri). Curious to know how much Alan et al. were able to squeeze into their weight budget.

[gpurcell]

I've been wondering what the focal lengths are for the two New Horizon cameras (Ralph and Lorri).  Curious to know how much Alan et al. were able to squeeze into their weight budget.

And will they have a way to focus 'em if the bake off doesn't fit the modeling profile!

[Bob Shaw]

The sad thing about the optical calibration issues that appear to be cropping up on so many current/future missions is that 35 years ago, they had the thing done and dusted:

http://members.tripod.com/petermasek/mariner9.html

"...star images were taken during the interplanetary cruise and also while orbiting Mars to determine and then monitor other geometric properties of the cameras. The narrow angle camera had a detection threshold of 9th visual magnitude, enabling at least a few stars to be imaged in any long exposure picture. Focal lengths and relative camera alignments were computed from the star images and were found to be stable to an accuracy of a pixel throughout the mission."

Of course, that was before all the fun with Hubble!

You'd think, though, that after Hubble, and MCO, and Genesis there's be a sorta checklist cum diary on each of the mission staff's desks - you know, things like:

* Fix Focus by Friday
* Go Metric on Monday
* Set pyros after Sunday (AKA This Way Up on Wednesday!)

[hendric]

The sad thing about the optical calibration issues that appear to be cropping up on so many current/future missions is that 35 years ago, they had the thing done and dusted:

http://members.tripod.com/petermasek/mariner9.html

Well, I'd bet $10 that the pixels now are at least an order of magnitude smaller, if not more, than the pixels for Mariner 9. I'd bet $1 they're 2 or more.