Voyager 1 reaches interstellar space

[john]

This is video taken from the International Space Station. While much of the video is time lapsed none of it is CGI (aside from the credits). Some truly remarkable and very sharp, high definition visuals. Try it full screen.

[Swansteel]

^^Now that is SPECTACULAR!!

[midnightblues]

A lot of brilliant Phd minds got that build to fly.Einstein would be impressed.

[john]

[john]

Mars' Moon Phobos Eclipses the Sun, as Seen by NASA Rover Curiosity [HD]

[john]

This is a picture of Pluto and it's moon, Charon, from about 20 million miles away.



But the New Horizons spacecraft is now about 13 million miles from Pluto and closing in. On July 14 the spacecraft is scheduled to be within about 7,750 miles of Pluto. New Horizons is so far from Earth that it takes 9 hours to send and receive a signal, making the spacecraft hard to direct in real time. New Horizons has been traveling for 9.5 years to reach Pluto.


Below is a Pluto-centric GIF where Charon is shown as it moves in relation to it. Charon makes one orbit around Pluto every six days, nine hours and 17.6 minutes — which is the same amount of time it takes Pluto to make one complete turn on its axis. The GIF incorporates images taken over the course of a few days.

[Himm2]

[john]

Pluto


The download speed from the New Horizons spacecraft is 1 kilobyte per second because it is so far away. It will require many months to download the photos and data collected in the flyby today. The photo above was downloaded last night before the craft became busy with the close in activities.

If the earth were the size of a basketball, pluto would be the size of a golfball. Using that same scale Pluto's closest approach to earth is about 50 miles. It takes 248 years to orbit the sun.

While the white area has been likened to a heart actually it is the Disney character (which may be revealed in more detail with today's encounter):

Artist's interpretation by Helge Bjørkhaug

[riley]

That is just crazy - the thing has been flying for 9 1/2 years.

New Horizons’ almost 10-year, three-billion-mile journey to closest approach at Pluto took about one minute less than predicted when the craft was launched in January 2006. The spacecraft threaded the needle through a 36-by-57 mile (60 by 90 kilometers) window in space -- the equivalent of a commercial airliner arriving no more off target than the width of a tennis ball.

Because New Horizons is the fastest spacecraft ever launched – hurtling through the Pluto system at more than 30,000 mph, a collision with a particle as small as a grain of rice could incapacitate the spacecraft. Once it reestablishes contact Tuesday night, it will take 16 months for New Horizons to send its cache of data – 10 years’ worth -- back to Earth.

.

[john]

That is just crazy - the thing has been flying for 9 1/2 years.

The size of the craft is compared to a grand piano and weighs 478 kilograms (1,054 lb), which is small by current standards. That includes a nuclear power source and fuel for adjusting course and position. It also runs on low power. It is a bare bones spacecraft, which was necessary to get the speed necessary to get it to Pluto in a reasonable amount of time. One speed comparision: It took 3 days for the Apollo mission reach the moon, while New Horizons took 8.5 hours to pass the moon.

In other astronomical news...

The first exoplanet (outside the solar system) was identified in 1995. Here is the current count from Nasa's Exoplanet Archive:
1,035 Planets around 774 Stars
179 Systems with Multiple Planets

It has been 17 months since that post and the Exoplanet archive now provides these numbers:
1858 confirmed planets
468 multiplanet systems

On average more than ten new planets orbiting around other suns are being discovered each week.