west didsblue
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Is Pluto counted as a planet these days? I seem to remember it being downgraded.
General Space Mission Thread
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Nope it was officially downgraded to a "dwarf planet". Which logically means that if dwarf planets aren't planets then according to the IAU, dwarfs aren't really people.
To be honest it was the right decision as we've found thousands of objects in the Solar System that share similar size and characteristics to Pluto and we could either exclude Pluto or the map of the Solar System would rival the Bayeux Tapestry in length.
Another morning, another day closer to the first ever quality pictures of Pluto.
They have done some preliminary colour work on the LORRI ones and they can see that Pluto and Charon are different colours.
Exciting times. The pictures get better every day as it gets closer everyday until 14th when they can turn the big HD camera on
They have done some preliminary colour work on the LORRI ones and they can see that Pluto and Charon are different colours.
Exciting times. The pictures get better every day as it gets closer everyday until 14th when they can turn the big HD camera on
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allan harper
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Why hasn't Hubble taken any decent pictures of Pluto?
west didsblue
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I suspect it has, however pictures taken from 3 billion miles away are never going to be as good as pictures taken from a few thousand miles away however good the camera is.
I've just checked and on May 15, 2015, New Horizons ' imaging resolution of Pluto exceeded Hubble's, and this will be the case until two months after the flyby. The closest approach will be only 6,200 miles on 14 July.
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It's too far away unfortunately to get any decent resolution.
Whereas galaxies that are very far away are very big and don't move too fast (allowing a longer time to collect the "data" for the picture), Pluto is very small in the sky and moves around which can put other, bigger things in its way.
Like why you can get a great and detailed resolution of a mountain but harder to get one of an ant.
yorknomore
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Pluto should be made an honorary planet in my opinion,can the scientific world do this or are they restrained by technical etiquette?
allan harper
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When you put it like that, it seems pretty obvious. Up until this mission what was the best picture we had of Pluto?
The IAU determines what makes a planet and essentially the arguments for Pluto being a planet rather than dwarf planet are emotional rather than scientific. Just because you really really want money to grow on trees doesn't mean that we should classify it as a plant.
Pluto is a strange and very important body because of how distinct it is. As you can see in the above animation, Pluto and Charon form a double planet system where they each orbit around a common point between them rather than a simple orbit like the Moon has to the Earth. Well, the Moon doesn't actually orbit the Earth but instead a common point of orbit that both the Earth and Moon go around. This common point just happens to be inside the Earth, more info here for the intrigued.
As the barycenter of Pluto and Charon is actually outside of Pluto then they form a strange double dwarf planet system. Pluto is in a place called the Kuiper Belt which is where all of the rocks that formed the planets in the Solar System originally are left. The ones more inner than this were swept up by the planets as they were going round the Sun like a space hoovering system.
Pluto is amongst the largest we've found in that belt but there are tens of thousands of things that we could call a planet if we call Pluto a planet. Instead most refer to it now as a Plutoid, a new type of large dwarf planet.
One of the very interesting things is that people are starting to consider the idea that Pluto may form its own system out there where it has lots and lots of Moons.
Unfortunately after a 10 year journey, New Horizons will be taking its best photos just for a single day as then it will be moving away from Pluto