congrats new horizon team

[ponylady]

roughly 10 years ago you embarked on a journey to the smallest planet in our little solarsystem. turns out you arrived at the largest
dwarfplanet.

but that doesn't matter. even the small preliminary glimpses that have been sent back with 600 bit/s have been worth the wait.

isn't it simply amazing that with all we have seen & explored in our solarsystem every new world we visit displays literally 1000s of surprises?

anyway, seems pluto has the biggest heart this side of the sun. really looking forward to all the other data.

and in case anyone forgets: unless we develop radical new propulsion systems this will be our 1st & final visit for at least the next 2 centuries.

if one wants to put a ranking on probe missions,
it probably would look like this:

1) voyager 1 & 2
really the 1st indepth reconnaisance of the outer solar system. still active today & sending data back from the heliopause. 1st manmade object to leave our solarsystem & the orbital plane

2)cassini
1st probe landing in the outer solar system & on 3rd mission prolongation, this is the benchmark
for all to follow. who can forget those hazy orange images from titan & the sound of the descent ?

3) new horizon
see above. we can reach the outer gas giants inside of 5 years, but the kuiper belt objects are a whole different beast.

and no, i haven't forgotten all the stuff done with comets & asteroids lately. it's just they are so much "easier" to reach & there is literally an abundance of targets that they don't present as much of a challenge. (scientists & technicians involved will beg to differ)

godspeed new horizon, whatever will be your next target.

for anybody wanting to know more now, just visit

nasa.gov

[bound_jenny]

When I first read about Pluto, way back (waaaaayyyy back... ), no one was sure how big it was (probably the size of Earth), how heavy it was (up to six times Earth's mass), or what it looked like. Soon, it was found it had a moon, Charon, and that put an upper limit on its mass. More and more observations trimmed the size downward several times, until now that we know it's about 2300 km across, with Charon about 1200 km. and quite lightweight. To put it in perspective, our Moon is 3476 km wide and barely more than 1% of our planet's mass.

But in all that time, I never figured that I would see the day when I could look at Pluto's face and scrutinize its moon Charon, and find out it has four other little moons - which are barely more than jagged shards but surprising nonetheless since Pluto is so small and light.

isn't it simply amazing that with all we have seen & explored in our solarsystem every new world we visit displays literally 1000s of surprises?

That's the wonder of it all. We figured that Pluto would look like Neptune's moon Triton, but it's a world of its own, with little in common with anything we've seen so far. It's a new world all its own. Even Charon is unexpected in appearance. The data of the flyby will take about 16 months to send back, but I'm sure the scientists will be scratching their heads for at least 16 years to come.

We've come a long way since Clyde Tombaugh found a moving dot in photographic plates back in 1930.

Wait until we fly by some Kuiper Belt Objects. There's no surer bet that there will be more head-scratching.

That's why I love astronomy.

Other than the fact that the name of the seventh planet from the Sun makes me giggle.

Jenny.

[SBadiction]

I've been around long enough to see some amazing things, I studied astronomy at university in the 70's and most of my textbooks are now ancient history. It was a time just after the Apollo missions and one of our lecturers was a NASA principle investigator and had moonrock in his lab and usually had some on display behind the window of his clean room so we could see it, but not touch.
The best images of the outer planet were fuzzy pictures from ground based telescopes, they are now real worlds and we are discovering exo planets round other stars. What will happen in the next 40 years!

[tiemeupalso]

just think,to plutonions the new horizon is probably the first UFO they have seen:)

[bound_jenny]

just think,to plutonions the new horizon is probably the first UFO they have seen:)

As the alien probe recedes from their planet, one can hear their shouts... "Next time send some heaters!"

Jenny.

[Natale]

As the alien probe recedes from their planet, one can hear their shouts... "Next time send some heaters!"

Jenny.

That's for sure!
If you're ever planning a vacation there, better bring your warm gloves: at -350º or -400º F it can get nippy!

(And that's still rather warm compared to interstellar space)

[ponylady]

@jenny:

before the 1st mariner flyby it was believed venus had an average temperature of about 32°C and dinosaurs roamed the surface.

it's simply amazing what a staggering amount
of new discoveries has been made in the last 1/2 century.

i remember talking with an astronomer in the late 70's (i must have been 12 or 14 years back than) about quasars. not much was really known in that time. there was even speculation that they moved faster than light.

nowadays we know they are not really objects but röntgen-jets from superheavy black holes.

thread moved. nothing funny about it. just didn't pay close attention when posting yesterday.

[bound_jenny]

thread moved. nothing funny about it. just didn't pay close attention when posting yesterday.

Distracted posting...

Like the lady driver of the Mini Cooper that ran into the back of a delivery van while pleasuring herself with a vibrator? Now that's funny.

it's simply amazing what a staggering amount of new discoveries has been made in the last 1/2 century.

All that simply because we could take a closer look, with better instruments. That's how we found out that Venus was actually hotter than Mercury.

Even more recently, there was all the hoopla a few years ago about Pluto not being the biggest object beyond Neptune. We just found out it really is the biggest (so far), just by taking a closer look. It's bigger than most solar system moons (excluding our own, and Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan and Triton), not only that, its moon Charon is bigger than most solar system moons. Every time we look closer at something, we find something new about it. Who had figured on lakes and seas on Titan? Ice geysers on Enceladus? Volcanoes on Io? Or that Saturn's moon Mimas looks disturbingly like the Death Star? How about Iapetus, which is white as snow on one side, and black as coal on the other?

We haven't even scratched the surface. What do worlds around other stars look like? We can assume generic properties by extrapolation of our own solar system's planets, but we can't speculate too much, or we'll be surprised yet again by Nature's ability to create weird and wonderful things (like me... ) that don't fall into any particular category.

The next 1/2 century will be truly amazing.

Jenny.

[Natale]

I remember a time when Pluto was considered the farthest edge of the solar system. Now we know of many dwarf and minor planets out in the Kuiper Belt and beyond.

There is even a dwarf planet only slightly smaller than Pluto called Eris, complete with it's tiny moon- Dysnomia. Other things lurking out there are Sedna, Orcus, Quaoar, Salacia and more. And then even farther out- waaay out there might lie the suspected Oort cloud, the source of many comets.
.

[ponylady]

....and the question why the kuiper-belt suddenly seems to end at about 50 AD.

could that be the place where the famous trans-
neptune is lurking?
*remember, there are still deviations in neptune's orbit that ain't explained yet, as pluto is way to small to be the cause*

[Natale]

However strong Neptune's orbital deviations are, it can't compare with Pluto, which follows a highly elliptical and inclined orbit. Sun to Pluto distance varies from 30 to 39 AU ( 1 AU or astronomical unit is the Earth-Sun distance), and it's also inclined much more than the other planets.

So: yes, an unknown something out there must have knocked it all crooked.

[Blacky]

When considering possible trans-neptunian high gravity objects Nemesis is a candidate that seems quite likely.

Nemesis is a supposed to exist red dwarf star and one part of a binary star, the second being: our sun!

What makes this theroy so convincing to me is the (highly periodic) extinction by cosmic bombardment, with a period of 29 million years. If you compare the orbital period of our known outer (dwarf-) planets to this period you'll end up with an object highly affecting the gravitational stability of the Kuiper-belt and, even more so, the Oort-cloud (should it exist).
The Oort-cloud is expected to be located at about 100,000 AU away from the sun.
Using the 29 million years period, Neptunes known data for period and distances, assuming a circular orbit for nemesis and using Kepler's third law you can easily calculate Nemesis' orbit to be located at a distance of 10^5 AU.
Not a big surprise, is it?

Why a red dwarf?
Because it is a) the most common type of stars in our region of the milky way and b) it has not been found (yet). The fact, that it is undiscovered by now indicates that it must be difficult to find. That again means that it has to be relatively dark.
The first part being a simple statistic-based guess, the second being kind of a weak argument of the "Because what must not be, cannot be"-type.

None the less there seem to be a lot of things going on out there of which we don't have the slightest idea yet (Dark energy, dark matter, the lack of anti-matter, trans-neptunian objects ...)


I feel like a kid at christmas when I think of what will be discovered within the next 20-30 years.

[bound_jenny]

The red/brown dwarf hypothesis (Nemesis) has been largely ruled out with IR telescopes like IRAS, WISE, Herschel, etc., which haven't found anything. A small star, even as cool as a brown dwarf, and as close as the Oort Cloud, would shine brightly at infrared wavelengths and we would have found that already. The periodicity of mass extinctions could be just illusions, or analytical bias.

It just so happens that once in a while something is kicked out of the Oort cloud and heads our way. Not only that, the wayward rock that smoked the dinosaurs likely came from the main belt of asteroids. And we have a mess of NEOs around our planet that are just waiting to smack us one up the back of the head.

The really worrisome ones are those we don't see yet. Or can't see coming because they're heading in from the Sun-side.

So death and devastation can rain down on our heads at any time.

Have a nice day!

Jenny.

[Blacky]

The red/brown dwarf hypothesis (Nemesis) has been largely ruled out with IR telescopes like IRAS, WISE, Herschel, etc., which haven't found anything. A small star, even as cool as a brown dwarf, and as close as the Oort Cloud, would shine brightly at infrared wavelengths and we would have found that already.

The periodicity of mass extinctions could be just illusions, or analytical bias.

Agreed. I didn't know about the experimental data from IR observation until now. With that information Nemesis is unlikely. Still the periodical distribution of extinction along the timeline seems too precise to be illusion or bias.
It may result from other periodic events than a bypassing star though. REALLY large planets might get the thing done too, and they wouldn't necessarily show in IR. The distance-period relation remains the same.
(Yes, I really do like the theory of a high-gravity object within the Oort-Cloud. It would make a lot of coincidence become causalities!)

...
The really worrisome ones are those we don't see yet. Or can't see coming because they're heading in from the Sun-side.

That's absolutely true. As for safety-concerns: The Oort-Cloud emittance of objects has, or seems to have, a period of 29 million years (as stated above). We live in a time about 10 - 12 million years after the last "observed" emittance. Thus I'm not afraid of our far out neighbours.
As you, Jenny, say, the NEO's are far more threatening.

So death and devastation can rain down on our heads at any time.

This makes me think of Blizzard's Diablo 1, where Pepin says:
"... but I do know this: If rocks are falling from the sky, you had better be careful!"

To me that seems to be some real good advice!

[tiemeupalso]

jenny said"That's how we found out that Venus was actually hotter than Mercury."
damn right she was.have you seen their statues:)

(sorry i cant help myself)