81–90 of 100 posts
For a visual of how far away Pluto really is from Earth(and really how far away everything in our solar system is from eachother) I recommend checking out Riding Light https://vimeo.com/117815404 "This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective." The video is 45 minutes long and m…
Breathtaking picture. I'm surprised no one has yet generated 3D models from what we've received so far. Surely we could somehow algorithmically extract at least partial height information from the shadows? I gave it a quick try previously but to no avail. Would anyone know how to start?
Conceptually it's simple, just very very intensive in terms of the amount of computation required...but well within the capabilities of NASA or even dedicated amateur researchers. As I understand it we are still slowly downloading pictures from the flyby and there is more to come (although it will be of lower resolution from here on out if NASA is releasing them in order of acquisition). Once the complete set has been compiled I imagine that creating a 3d model would be a high priority.
You could look into how Google did their Moon and Mars virtual environments, though I understand they also had the benefit of radar/lidar mapping data as well as optical.
I made one of these my cover image on Facebook and called it The Ice Mountains of Pluto, which is a Golden Age Science Fiction story title if I ever heard one. But this isn't SF! It's a real photo! That was taken by an atomic powered robot! Amazing...
Not entirely related, but I'm guessing you would enjoy reading Atomic Robo[1]. It's a comic (that has all 9 volumes for free online and the 10th is being released a page at a time daily) that follows an atomic powered robot built by Nikola Tesla. Steven Hawking is a nemesis of Robo, Carl Sagan helped our hero get to Mars with Voyager, and there is a talking Dr. Dinosaur who claims that he time traveled to our time us…
For a visual of how far away Pluto really is from Earth(and really how far away everything in our solar system is from eachother) I recommend checking out Riding Light https://vimeo.com/117815404 "This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective." The video is 45 minutes long and m…
Also, this guy built a scale model in the Black Rock Desert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR3Igc3Rhfg EDIT: This one doesn't include Pluto.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, this guy built a scale model in the Black Rock Desert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR3Igc3Rhfg EDIT: This one doesn't include Pluto.
If you're in Europe, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System (which goes all the way to the termination shock, apparently.)
For a visual of how far away Pluto really is from Earth(and really how far away everything in our solar system is from eachother) I recommend checking out Riding Light https://vimeo.com/117815404 "This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective." The video is 45 minutes long and m…
Grasping that it took New Horizon about one year since launch to reach Jupiter, then about 9 years extra to reach Pluto is also a nice demonstration.
If this is not astro picture of the year, I don't know what is: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-...
For a visual of how far away Pluto really is from Earth(and really how far away everything in our solar system is from eachother) I recommend checking out Riding Light https://vimeo.com/117815404 "This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective." The video is 45 minutes long and m…
