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Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

nasa.gov

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Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#41

Post by moron4hire »

eric_h wrote: post #38
moron4hire wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this page [0], which links to a broken link on NASA's site as source, it was "only" $720 million, not billions. I only mention it to underscore that our intuition on the cost of NASA is often wrong. You see a lot of people complaining about the relevance of spending on NASA, when they actually represent a very small part of the overall budget and they spend the money very well. In contrast, Facebook boug…

It is $720 million built on top of the shoulders of billions and billions of dollars of the failures and successes of missions that preceded it.

That's not how accounting works. If it did, I'd personally be worth billions, too.

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#43

Post by kenrikm »

moron4hire wrote: post #25
drinchev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually photos are evaluated not only for the reality that they've captured, but also how hard it was to take that photo. In the case of Pluto's high-resolution photos, there are maybe billion dollars behind it and hundreds of people that worked for years before actually the photo has been taken.

According to this page [0], which links to a broken link on NASA's site as source, it was "only" $720 million, not billions. I only mention it to underscore that our intuition on the cost of NASA is often wrong. You see a lot of people complaining about the relevance of spending on NASA, when they actually represent a very small part of the overall budget and they spend the money very well. In contrast, Facebook boug…

The solution is not to tax "toys" as you call them, there are already plenty of existing tax dollars to go around. The larger issue is that we would rather buy 1700 F35 fighters instead of funding NASA for the next 10 years. Actually even the F35 is a slightly more reasonable use of money then some of the other things that make it onto the budget. The money is there in many cases but the will to use it for NASA is not since to many NASA is considered a toy.

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#44

Post by gulpahum »

heyitskevin wrote: post #40

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…

Another way to understand the distances is the old scroll-through solar system. If the moon is one pixel, then Pluto is pretty far away.

http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.h...

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#45

Post by bendykstra »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #36

After recovering from a moment of awe, I wonder why can't the photos be in color if it has full spectrum visible light sensors? From the description: "Ralph consists of three panchromatic (black-and-white) and four color imagers inside its Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), as well as an infrared compositional mapping spectrometer called the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA)."

New Horizons team member John Spencer answered that question on the Unmanned Spaceflight forum:

Yes, this was a single channel image (we wouldn't have held out on you if we'd had color!). Several of our closest MVIC images were b/w rather than color, because of limited time near closest approach- we can take B/W images faster than color ones, and they allow higher-res LORRI riders. We still don't know what color the haze is, though we'll have lower-resolution high-phase color images soon, which will answer that question.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=8071&...

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#46

Post by gulpahum »

joshontheweb wrote: post #3

Wow, I got chills looking at these images!

It is a strange world! (and a planet)

Again, the reality is stranger than fiction. I don't think any science fiction movie would have depicted a planet with a giant heart on it. It would have been just ridiculous!

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#47

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

noja wrote: post #10
psygong2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a black and white photo of rocks and ice. It's interesting that it is Pluto, but photo of the year? Why?

It's a first-of-a-kind high quality photo of a planet which we have never seen before! (What would be exciting for you, out of interest?)

It's the first-of-a-kind photo from a probe which flew across most of the solar system and skimmed the target at a range of 7,750 miles while travelling at nearly 31,000 mph.

And sent back images using about the same ambient light as a slightly cloudy evening on Earth.

With no motion blur.

That's not just exciting - it's an amazing feat of engineering.

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#48

Post by Sgt_Apone »

andy_ppp wrote: post #12
andy_ppp wrote: post #11

Those mountains! Anyone know how high they are - they look enormous.

A quick Google reveals 2 miles high or so. There must be some weird geology going on on Pluto!

For reference, that's roughly the height of Glacier Peak in Washington.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_Peak#/media/File:Glaci...

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#49

Post by moron4hire »

kenrikm wrote: post #43
moron4hire wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this page [0], which links to a broken link on NASA's site as source, it was "only" $720 million, not billions. I only mention it to underscore that our intuition on the cost of NASA is often wrong. You see a lot of people complaining about the relevance of spending on NASA, when they actually represent a very small part of the overall budget and they spend the money very well. In contrast, Facebook boug…

The solution is not to tax "toys" as you call them, there are already plenty of existing tax dollars to go around. The larger issue is that we would rather buy 1700 F35 fighters instead of funding NASA for the next 10 years. Actually even the F35 is a slightly more reasonable use of money then some of the other things that make it onto the budget. The money is there in many cases but the will to use it for NASA is no…

Yeah, if we just stopped burning dollars by the cargoship load on a "war" with no defined goals, then we could probably afford to do whatever the hell we wanted on every other project going on in the country.

Re: Pluto ‘Wows’ in Spectacular New Backlit Panorama

#50

Post by ahuth »

moron4hire wrote: post #41
eric_h wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is $720 million built on top of the shoulders of billions and billions of dollars of the failures and successes of missions that preceded it.

That's not how accounting works. If it did, I'd personally be worth billions, too.

Pretty sure he/she's not talking about accounting.
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