Pluto does not like it when you call it a dwarf planet. It prefers little planet. Please be more thoughtful and PC in the future, people.

It can be called a minor planet, if you like. Not as specific though. I like to call it the plutoid Pluto, does Pluto like that?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAU_definition_of_planet

The only fixed is the "holy 8", planet box is clear from all overlapping.


Is Earth a little planet btw? You probably prefer small planet? Or medium sized, for those wanting to point out the importance of us.

Pluto lost the term Planet and gained and empire of Plutoids. A net gain. The plutoids lost their own identity!

Seriously all that happened is that no celestial body lost anything and only thing lost was the sensible mind of many "scientists".

There are only 2 distinctions regarding planets. Whether its a rocky system or a Gas giant (which also have often rocky core). Planet of the rocky type system must be some object that has been created by its own gravitational attraction and settled to a spherical shape because of its own dynamics (not a rock that was broken from another system in a violent collision and became an asteroid or a comet etc) and is rotating the sun (star or binary/triple etc system ) on its own without another major body around to claim it as a satellite. You can add that this system is also rather stable and not subject to radical dynamic development that will destroy it soon (ie not interacting with another major object that will destabilize it). However it would seem that this is a bit arbitrary and the very notion this object has settled to the shape it has indicates a rather extended period of life of probably thousands of years (takes time to become spherical like that and solid - and in that time if something was destabilizing it would have acted already) during which why would you not call it a planet even if in its future there is an instability that will destroy it.

You can use sizes to describe it further. For me all that matters is size and density and gravitational acceleration at surface to have an idea how big and compact it is. The rest are idiotic nitty garbage for losers.

Pluto is going to be nicely developed during its coming orbit (248y). I predict space elevators going up 20000 km from its surface, where in a synchronous orbit various Stanford Torus style colonies will be developed using material mined at the surface below. A stream of AI controlled mega cargo ships, with minor human role in actual hard operations, will be bringing liquid Hydrogen from Neptune (Deuterium for fusion fuel, supporting with energy a system so far from sun and standard H for organic chemistry industry and water synthesis as well as for quick rocket boost fuel from surface).

The sun will appear as a very bright still painful to stare for more than 2-3 seconds, rather extended dot in the sky. The light equivalent of 200 moons from a size smaller than 1600 times the current moon size. It would look during the day (3 earth days) like a park illuminated by artificial light at night.

Fusion will be running all the system and the synthesis of organic fuels for other operations or charging batteries. Sun being so far away will have a minor cosmetic illumination role.

Inside the developing colonies in orbit you would have excellent closed ecosystems that remind of earth, brightly illuminated, only much better organized and efficient with regular day-night cycles. Entire lakes and waterfalls created from hydrogen imported from Neptune and Oxygen from material of the surface of Pluto. Talk about a family reunion 5 bil years in waiting! All infrastructure and ground material for agriculture and ecosystems and "outdoor" fun and games produced from material processed from the mines at the surface of the planet and carried to orbit by the elevators that are in endless operation.

A >$10^20 economy thriving an "eternity" (in terms of travel time still weeks to months) away from the sun. An oasis in the outer solar system. A base where an interstellar trip can be launched from. Eris would be a rival system of similar development even further out. Who needs a sun when you have advanced fusion available finally and AI running things to any direction you decide. The atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus can finance everything 100000x over. Terra forming, who needs that? Try Terra building! Near absolute zero temperatures outside, excellent 20C inside. Put the heating bill to Deuterium and eventually black hole technology or whatever breakthrough is out there still waiting to be recognized.

If Pluto is a dwarf, would that make Jupiter obese?

We will be glued to our seats now: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/



Moons Hydra (yellow) and Nix (orange)

well that's fun

It is really amazing that the resolution is high enough to show the colored squares around the moves.

1.15 AU left. Will celebrate when 1.0

From that picture it looks like Pluto should have been swallowed up by Neptune by now.


PairTheBoard

The trajectories dont cross (Pluto is actually at a different plane than the other planets of the solar system which is intriguing and probably has a lot to do with how it all started and was captured etc) so its only tiny perturbations that take place over millions of years due to the high periods already (ie in between close encounters which take thousands of years themselves).

Yeah, second picture describes the planes: pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Where-is-New-Horizons/index.php

1.14 AU and counting...

0.97 AU...

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/...?page=20150312

Wow, an AU is larger than I realize. Takes 4 months to travel an AU.

And takes 8 minutes for light, while it goes to the moon in a second.

NASA's New Horizons probe beams back its first color image of Pluto, see link below:


http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/15/tech/p...color-picture/

Latest on NASA's New Horizons probe: Faintest known moons all detected

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/na...st-known-moons

From above link-

For the first time, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has photographed Kerberos and Styx – the smallest and faintest of Pluto’s five known moons. Following the spacecraft’s detection of Pluto’s giant moon Charon in July 2013, and Pluto’s smaller moons Hydra and Nix in July 2014 and January 2015, respectively, New Horizons is now within sight of all the known members of the Pluto system.

“New Horizons is now on the threshold of discovery,” said mission science team member John Spencer, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “If the spacecraft observes any additional moons as we get closer to Pluto, they will be worlds that no one has seen before.”

Drawing ever closer to Pluto in mid-May, New Horizons will begin its first search for new moons or rings that might threaten the spacecraft on its passage through the Pluto system. The images of faint Styx and Kerberos shown here are allowing the search team to refine the techniques they will use to analyze those data, which will push the sensitivity limits even deeper.

Kerberos and Styx were discovered in 2011 and 2012, respectively, by New Horizons team members using the Hubble Space Telescope. Styx, circling Pluto every 20 days between the orbits of Charon and Nix, is likely just 4 to 13 miles (approximately 7 to 21 kilometers) in diameter, and Kerberos, orbiting between Nix and Hydra with a 32-day period, is just 6 to 20 miles (approximately 10 to 30 kilometers) in diameter. Each is 20 to 30 times fainter than Nix and Hydra.

_______________________________

Just to wet your whistle before next months flyby.

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/na...absolute-chaos

Guys, what do you think Pluto will look like?

A dog?

Pluto may look like a somewhat colorful version of Ceres. Not very intense but still more interesting colors. Probably not perfectly spherical, with some craters and very frozen. It will look like a double system with Charon looking nontrivial in size companion in some 9x type distance to its diameter. I think it will be more interesting than Ceres and very cold like a frozen satellite of a big gas giant type thing with the rocky part below a frozen "ocean" type surface. It may look less "dead" than Ceres or the moon, more variation say. No visible atmosphere (its very thin).

We will see it 4000 times closer than right now in 32 days or so, closer than the first approach of Ceres i think. The magical close meeting moment wont last more than 30 min i think, only 5-10 min of it real spectacular close up. It will look interesting though for about an hour or two before and after. Imagine a 4 hour interesting meeting. Before and after that probably with zooming also interesting. It will look a bit smaller than how earth appears to geosynchronous satellites.

Maybe half that size earth looks in that apollo 8 picture without any zoom or say at that closer point for +-10 min.




It says about 50 meters per pixel eventually kind of resolution of surface. Imagine that in this resolution the full disk is like 24000 pixels. Real cool eventually in detail when zoomed.

We wont observe substantial rotation during the flyby hours (just a little bit say 10 deg/4h).

Somehow it will be an amazing triumph for science we will actually see more than a dot of that body which has puzzled us since 1930.

The hyperbolic orbit will bend around 0.5 deg as a result of the encounter i calculated. It could have been a lot more if they wanted to take it real close in a scary manner but the mission has other targets too so probably its wasnt worth the risk to adjust orbit so much closer than 10000km (Pluto is like rp=1200km and Sharon rs=600km orbits at about r=17000km from barycenter) and then curve it a lot out from current direction of exit from the solar system. It is moving at about 14.6km/sec right now about ~40 mil km away from Pluto with around 32 days to go.

Plus the orbit must be such that it can get a decent chance to also see Charon within a reasonably close distance as well. Its funny but they will need to update details a bit to make sure its not hitting (or coming too close) any of the moons (which is kind of ridiculous tiny probability but you have to make sure anyway lol).

Imagine trying to do crazy things like get a crazy close fly by Pluto that then takes you to another close fly by Sharon (not sure if such parameter is possible due to current relative positions of the 2 bodies but why not really if well tuned and corrected or even reverse the order it happens ie which is first) its probably still not too late if one wanted to do something ridiculous like that given it would take only a tiny perturbation in the velocity vector at such point (and they probably do have enough left over fuel in ion propulsion but also other forms) in time but the acceleration on the spaceship (at the encounter high curvature points) would be dangerous possibly and it would mess up later Kuiper belt targets (plus they need to know the orbit details of everything involved to substantial accuracy). I would love to be able to have a simulation to play with these to show you want i mean. Very rich chaos when you have 3 body problems like that (in fact 4 with the sun here too) you may even get a change in overall kinetic energy of the spaceship (as seen at "infinity") not just the direction or velocity.

It did get a gravitational boost from the Jupiter encounter 8 years ago i think flying at about 2 mil km from the planet seeing this (and with zoom even better details);



http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/022807.php





https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...xC4xtuCcx1uvRh

It's starting to look like something!



http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/...?page=20150622