RedSimba Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 I haven't gotten used to this new forum layout (I don't see post preview anywhere ) so the article's probably gonna look a mess. Just click the link at the end if it doesn't work for y'all lol... Mind-blowing Pluto has ice mountains and waterBy Amanda Barnett, CNN Updated 8:51 AM ET, Thu July 16, 2015 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosPluto is shown here along with Charon in images taken on June 25 and 27. The image on the right shows a series of evenly spaced dark spots near Pluto's equator. Scientists hope to solve the puzzle as New Horizons gets closer to Pluto.Hide Caption12 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons took a series of 13 images of Charon circling Pluto over the span of 6½ days in April. As the images were being taken, the spacecraft moved from about 69 million miles from Pluto to 64 million miles.Hide Caption13 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosLook carefully at the images above: They mark the first time New Horizons has photographed Pluto's smallest and faintest moons, Kerberos and Styx. The images were taken from April 25 to May 1.Hide Caption14 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons used its color imager to capture this image of Pluto and Charon on April 9. This was the first color image taken by a spacecraft approaching Pluto and Charon, according to NASA. The spacecraft was about 71 million miles away from Pluto when the photo was taken.Hide Caption15 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosIn August, New Horizons crossed the orbit of Neptune, the last planet it would pass on its journey to Pluto. New Horizons took this photo of Neptune and its large moon Triton when it was about 2.45 billion miles from the planet -- more than 26 times the distance between the Earth and our sun.Hide Caption16 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons captured this image of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io in early 2007.Hide Caption17 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosOn its way to Pluto, New Horizons snapped these photos of Jupiter's four large "Galilean" moons. From left is Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.Hide Caption18 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosA white arrow points to Pluto in this photo taken in September 2006 from New Horizons. The spacecraft was still about 2.6 billion miles from Pluto.Hide Caption19 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosPluto was discovered in 1930 but was only a speck of light in the best telescopes on Earth until February 2010, when NASA released this photo. It was created by combining several images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope -- each only a few pixels wide -- through a technique called dithering. NASA says it took four years and 20 computers operating continuously to create the image.Hide Caption20 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosThis was one of the best views we had of Pluto and its moon Charon before the New Horizons mission. The image was taken by the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera on the Hubble Space Telescope on February 21, 1994.Hide Caption21 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosA Hubble Space Telescope image of Pluto and its moons. Charon is the largest moon close to Pluto. The other four bright dots are smaller moons discovered in 2005, 2011 and 2012: Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx.Hide Caption22 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on January 19, 2006. The probe, about the size of a piano, weighed nearly 1,054 pounds at launch. It has seven instruments on board to take images and sample Pluto's atmosphere. After it completes its five-month study of Pluto, the spacecraft will keep going deeper into the Kuiper Belt.Hide Caption23 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew close-up images of a region near Pluto's equator reveal a giant surprise: a range of youthful mountains. NASA released its latest series of Pluto images on Wednesday, July 15. Its New Horizons spacecraft was launched in 2006 and traveled 3 billion miles to the dwarf planet.Hide Caption1 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosRemarkable new details of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, are revealed in this image released on July 15.Hide Caption2 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosThe latest spectra from New Horizons' Ralph instrument was released on July 15. It reveals an abundance of methane ice, but with striking differences from place to place across the frozen surface of Pluto.Hide Caption3 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNASA team members and guests count down to the spacecraft's approach to Pluto on Tuesday, July 14.Hide Caption4 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosThis image of Pluto was captured by New Horizons on Monday, July 13, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach. The spacecraft was 476,000 miles from Pluto's surface.Hide Caption5 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosThe colors in this image of Pluto and Charon are exaggerated to make it easy to see their different features. (These are not the actual colors of Pluto and Charon, and the two bodies aren't really that close together in space.) This image was created on July 13, one day before New Horizons was to make its closest approach to Pluto.Hide Caption6 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosThis image of Pluto was captured by New Horizons on Sunday, July 12. The spacecraft was 1.6 million miles from Pluto at the time.Hide Caption7 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons snapped this photo of Charon on July 12. It reveals a system of chasms larger than the Grand Canyon. The spacecraft was 1.6 million miles away when the image was taken.Hide Caption8 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons was about 3.7 million miles from Pluto and Charon when it took this image on Wednesday, July 8.Hide Caption9 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosDo you see a heart on Pluto? This image was taken on Tuesday, July 7, by New Horizons when it was about 5 million miles from the planet. Look to the lower right, and you'll see a large bright area -- about 1,200 miles across -- that resembles a heart.Hide Caption10 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons took six black-and-white photos of Pluto and Charon between June 23 and 29. The images were combined with color data from another instrument on the space probe to create the images above. The spacecraft was 15 million miles away when it started the sequence and 11 million miles when the last photo was taken.Hide Caption11 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosPluto is shown here along with Charon in images taken on June 25 and 27. The image on the right shows a series of evenly spaced dark spots near Pluto's equator. Scientists hope to solve the puzzle as New Horizons gets closer to Pluto.Hide Caption12 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons took a series of 13 images of Charon circling Pluto over the span of 6½ days in April. As the images were being taken, the spacecraft moved from about 69 million miles from Pluto to 64 million miles.Hide Caption13 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosLook carefully at the images above: They mark the first time New Horizons has photographed Pluto's smallest and faintest moons, Kerberos and Styx. The images were taken from April 25 to May 1.Hide Caption14 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons used its color imager to capture this image of Pluto and Charon on April 9. This was the first color image taken by a spacecraft approaching Pluto and Charon, according to NASA. The spacecraft was about 71 million miles away from Pluto when the photo was taken.Hide Caption15 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosIn August, New Horizons crossed the orbit of Neptune, the last planet it would pass on its journey to Pluto. New Horizons took this photo of Neptune and its large moon Triton when it was about 2.45 billion miles from the planet -- more than 26 times the distance between the Earth and our sun.Hide Caption16 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons captured this image of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io in early 2007.Hide Caption17 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosOn its way to Pluto, New Horizons snapped these photos of Jupiter's four large "Galilean" moons. From left is Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.Hide Caption18 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosA white arrow points to Pluto in this photo taken in September 2006 from New Horizons. The spacecraft was still about 2.6 billion miles from Pluto.Hide Caption19 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosPluto was discovered in 1930 but was only a speck of light in the best telescopes on Earth until February 2010, when NASA released this photo. It was created by combining several images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope -- each only a few pixels wide -- through a technique called dithering. NASA says it took four years and 20 computers operating continuously to create the image.Hide Caption20 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosThis was one of the best views we had of Pluto and its moon Charon before the New Horizons mission. The image was taken by the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera on the Hubble Space Telescope on February 21, 1994.Hide Caption21 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosA Hubble Space Telescope image of Pluto and its moons. Charon is the largest moon close to Pluto. The other four bright dots are smaller moons discovered in 2005, 2011 and 2012: Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx.Hide Caption22 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on January 19, 2006. The probe, about the size of a piano, weighed nearly 1,054 pounds at launch. It has seven instruments on board to take images and sample Pluto's atmosphere. After it completes its five-month study of Pluto, the spacecraft will keep going deeper into the Kuiper Belt.Hide Caption23 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew close-up images of a region near Pluto's equator reveal a giant surprise: a range of youthful mountains. NASA released its latest series of Pluto images on Wednesday, July 15. Its New Horizons spacecraft was launched in 2006 and traveled 3 billion miles to the dwarf planet.Hide Caption1 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosRemarkable new details of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, are revealed in this image released on July 15.Hide Caption2 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosThe latest spectra from New Horizons' Ralph instrument was released on July 15. It reveals an abundance of methane ice, but with striking differences from place to place across the frozen surface of Pluto.Hide Caption3 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNASA team members and guests count down to the spacecraft's approach to Pluto on Tuesday, July 14.Hide Caption4 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosThis image of Pluto was captured by New Horizons on Monday, July 13, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach. The spacecraft was 476,000 miles from Pluto's surface.Hide Caption5 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosThe colors in this image of Pluto and Charon are exaggerated to make it easy to see their different features. (These are not the actual colors of Pluto and Charon, and the two bodies aren't really that close together in space.) This image was created on July 13, one day before New Horizons was to make its closest approach to Pluto.Hide Caption6 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosThis image of Pluto was captured by New Horizons on Sunday, July 12. The spacecraft was 1.6 million miles from Pluto at the time.Hide Caption7 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons snapped this photo of Charon on July 12. It reveals a system of chasms larger than the Grand Canyon. The spacecraft was 1.6 million miles away when the image was taken.Hide Caption8 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons was about 3.7 million miles from Pluto and Charon when it took this image on Wednesday, July 8.Hide Caption9 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosDo you see a heart on Pluto? This image was taken on Tuesday, July 7, by New Horizons when it was about 5 million miles from the planet. Look to the lower right, and you'll see a large bright area -- about 1,200 miles across -- that resembles a heart.Hide Caption10 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosNew Horizons took six black-and-white photos of Pluto and Charon between June 23 and 29. The images were combined with color data from another instrument on the space probe to create the images above. The spacecraft was 15 million miles away when it started the sequence and 11 million miles when the last photo was taken.Hide Caption11 of 23 Pluto on the horizon 23 photosPluto is shown here along with Charon in images taken on June 25 and 27. The image on the right shows a series of evenly spaced dark spots near Pluto's equator. Scientists hope to solve the puzzle as New Horizons gets closer to Pluto.Hide Caption12 of 23 Story highlightsThe first zoomed-in image of Pluto is releasedThe image shows quite a surprise -- icy mountains as high as 11,000 feetResearchers think the mountains indicate Pluto has water ice Laurel, Maryland (CNN)It had been downgraded to a dwarf planet. It looked like a fuzzy blob in our best telescopes. And it was often referred to as just an icy orb. Even scientists working on the first mission to Pluto expected to find an old, pockmarked world.But Pluto is turning out to be full of surprises."I'm completely surprised," said Alan Stern, principal investigator for NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.The first zoomed-in image of Pluto was released on Wednesday, a day after the spacecraft made its closest pass over Pluto, cruising about 7,700 miles over the surface. The probe traveled more than 3.6 billion miles to snap the photo, and scientists think it was well worth the trip.Pluto's 'planet' debate reignited NASA reveals new close-up images of Pluto 01:44PLAY VIDEOThe new image shows a crisp, clear view of Pluto's surface, and it's covered with wide smooth areas, lumpy terrain and mountains. Huge mountains."They would stand up respectably against the Rocky Mountains," said John Spencer, a planetary scientist on the New Horizons mission.The height of the mountains is important because it's a clue that there may be water on Pluto. Scientists know that Pluto's surface is covered with nitrogen ice, methane ice and carbon monoxide ice. But Spencer says, "You can't make mountains out of that stuff. It's too soft."That leaves H20 -- water ice like we have here on Earth."The steep topography means that the bedrock that makes those mountains must be made of H2O -- of water ice," said Stern. "We can be very sure that the water is there in great abundance.""Who would have supposed that there were ice mountains?" said Hal Weaver, another New Horizons project scientist."It's just blowing my mind," he said.Before New Horizons was launched, scientists thought Pluto probably had arocky core surrounded by a mantle of water ice. But they were having a hard time finding evidence of the water ice, Weaver said. He he expects more data from the spacecraft will confirm that the ice mountains mean there is lots of water on Pluto."That's the only way to get these huge mountains, and that's a big surprise I think."Finding water on another world is important because water is considered one of the key ingredients to life as we know it.Weaver says they'll learn a lot more about the makeup of Pluto's ice mountains in the days ahead. It will take about 16 months to download all of the information gathered by New Horizon's seven instruments during the flyby. Where are the craters? Another striking thing about the close-up image of Pluto is what's missing: impact craters.Pluto is in the Kuiper Belt, a region of space filled with other icy objects. The New Horizons team expected that Pluto's surface would have been pelted with some of these objects."I would never have believed that the first close up picture we get of Pluto didn't have a single impact crater on it," said Spencer. "That's just astonishing."That lack of craters means the surface of Pluto is young, less than 100 million years old, the researchers said. That's a small fraction of the age of the solar system -- 4.5 billion years. Mysterious moons NASA also released a new, full globe view of Pluto's largest moon, Charon.Before the flyby, New Horizons co-investigator Cathy Olkin thought the moon would be an ancient terrain covered in craters."Charon just blew our socks off," Olkin said as the new image of the moon was flashed on the screen at a news briefing."It's a small world with deep canyons, troughs, cliffs ... dark regions that are still slightly mysterious to us."She said Charon has a series of troughs and cliffs that extend 600 miles across the surface."Pluto did not disappoint. Charon did not disappoint either," Olkin said.Besides Charon, Pluto has four other small moons: Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.New Horizons captured the first images of Hydra. It's just pixels, but NASA is very excited about it because it shows the elongated moon's size. Photos of Pluto taken over time show how the planet has come into focus.EXPAND IMAGEEven before New Horizons made its close flyby, a more distant image on Pluto caught the public's imagination: a prominent, bright heart-shaped region.That region is being named the Tombaugh Reggio in honor of Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto in 1930.NASA probe passes Pluto, carrying ashes of man who discovered itThe spacecraft was launched on January 19, 2006, before the big debate started over Pluto's status as a planet. In August of that same year, theInternational Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet.But Stern has always disagreed with the IAU's decision."I don't know what to call this thing except a planet," Stern told CNN.New Horizons is now more than a million miles on the other side of Pluto. The probe will keep flying out into the Kuiper Belt. NASA may extend its mission and send it to explore another small world.Quiz: Test your knowledge of PlutoThe New Horizon's mission completes what NASA calls the reconnaissance of the classical solar system, and it makes the United States the first nation to send a space probe to every planet from Mercury to Pluto.CNN's Amanda Barnett reported and wrote this story from the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland. CNN's Ben Brumfield wrote and reported from Atlanta.http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/us/nasa-new-horizons-pluto-flyby/This is so cool tho! I remember whenever looking at images, it looked so pixelated (I also remember the good ol days when it was a planet lol) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rock & Roll Hall of Game Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 Awesome thread.. but the post is soo funky looking LOL You tried tho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquaria Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 Wow you can literally paste a website in This is cool I'll definitely think about reading this article later but not get around to it 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aquaria Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 This is cool. What happened in April? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bailey Posted July 16, 2015 Share Posted July 16, 2015 Im excited to see the photos, this and Greece is all NPR has been talking about Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bu. Posted July 17, 2015 Share Posted July 17, 2015 (edited) Doesn't it look beautiful so far? I can't believe they've never sent anything to Pluto before? This is incredible to me. Edited July 17, 2015 by Side-A Bu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedSimba Posted July 17, 2015 Author Share Posted July 17, 2015 And I'm glad the probe made it there in one piece. It's so tiny and far away, some insane precision was needed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeJoe Posted July 20, 2015 Share Posted July 20, 2015 hopefully one day we'll get to see up close photos. I'm also positive there's other life somewhere out there in our galaxy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hotboy06 Posted July 20, 2015 Share Posted July 20, 2015 Pluto is unbothered by all of this publicity. The Queen should get her planetary status back. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedSimba Posted July 20, 2015 Author Share Posted July 20, 2015 Yes! Pluto will always be a planet in my book. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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