QUOTE (Habukaz @ Mar 23 2015, 04:11 PM)
Now, if I've understood
this blogpost correctly and not made any mistakes, here should be all of the best-of-the-day (and best yet) non-binned NH images taken between 1 Februrary and 12 July with the corresponding estimated sizes of Pluto and Charon in pixels (as viewed with LORRI).
Using 2400 km as diameter for Pluto, 1207 km for Charon and rounding to nearest integer. Green marks the first non-binned imaging session that month.
12.04: 551 km/px - Pluto
4 pixels across, Charon
2 pixels[...]
03.06: 242 km/px - Pluto
10 pixels across, Charon
5pixelsIt is not very clear to me when the "Hubble limit" will be crossed: according to
this blog post, the Hubble limit is around 800 km/pixel and Pluto being 3 pixel large, but according to
this page, at least 250 km/pixel resolution (pluto ~=10 pixel) can be reached by processing, obtaining these images:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/s...o-20100204.htmlIn first case, we would be currently crossing Hubble limit; in second case, we would be going to cross it in June.
Amazing achievements in both cases!
But we'll have to be patient:
QUOTE
* LORRI's detector is 1024 pixels square. Like many modern space cameras, when the camera reads out its detector, it digitizes each pixel as a 12-bit number. they can be zipped up to about 2.5 Megabits without any loss of detail. It takes 42 minutes to return one LORRI photo to Earth [on January 2015; on July/september, communication will be slower]
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakda...to-is-hard.htmlQUOTE
*There are few data downlinks near closest approach, so we will not receive many images in real time. But the ones we get will be great.
*The mission has promised to release LORRI images (higher-resolution, black-and-white) in near-real-time, but not MVIC (lower-resolution, color) images.
*Only 1% of the science data from the flyby will be returned to Earth during the period around closest approach, including images that the mission has selected for their high science value as well as high public interest. They will be releasing captioned and processed versions as fast as their small team can manage.
*The rest of the image data will be downlinked beginning in September, about 2 months after encounter. It will take 10 weeks to download the full data set.
[...]
On September 14, New Horizons will begin downlinking a "browse" version of the entire Pluto data set, in which all images will be lossily compressed. It will take about 10 weeks to get that data set to the ground. There will be compression artifacts, but we'll see the entire data set.
Then, around November 16, New Horizons will begin to downlink the entire science data set losslessly compressed. It will take a year to complete that process.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakda...pectations.html