7 ms·

It's a black and white photo of rocks and ice. It's interesting that it is Pluto, but photo of the year? Why?

ckarmann 11y ago
While other have insisted on how that photo is a technology feast, taken from billions of miles away, from something we have never seen before, it's also breathtaking from what it shows: a multilayered atmosphere, completely unique in the Solar System; mountains of water ice next to vast plains of what may be ice nitrogen, also features never seen before on any other body of the Solar System. Before July, many people thought that maybe we would see just another round rock full of craters, ala Mercury, nobody expected what we see now. How many times in your adult life a photo has shown you something that you could never have imagined before? On top of that, the backlit quality of the photo makes the relief jump at you in a staggering way. It's not like the pictures taken from above, where you can see the same features from very high, in a detached way. Here the landscape just feel real, like if you were there looking at it. Also it gives a sense of the size of the mountains, especially compared to the curvature of the horizon.
- bad-joke 11y ago
  Weirdly, the light is what surprises me the most. I always thought the surface of Pluto was cloaked in eternal night because the sun is so far away. Turns out high noon on Pluto is more or less as bright as twilight on Earth! Check your local "Pluto time" here: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/plutotime/ http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/plutotime/
jameshart 11y ago
Except, it's in a temperature regime so alien to us that your assumptions on seeing those 'rocks and ice' are very wrong. The 'rocks' are water ice. The 'ice' is frozen nitrogen. Nobody thought Pluto would have a dynamic weather system - a climate. And yet it seems to have a glacial nitrogen precipitation cycle. The geological forms look familiar. The mechanisms are not. That's pretty incredible.
noja 11y ago
It's a first-of-a-kind high quality photo of a planet which we have never seen before! (What would be exciting for you, out of interest?)
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  It's the first-of-a-kind photo from a probe which flew across most of the solar system and skimmed the target at a range of 7,750 miles while travelling at nearly 31,000 mph. And sent back images using about the same ambient light as a slightly cloudy evening on Earth. With no motion blur. That's not just exciting - it's an amazing feat of engineering.
drinchev 11y ago
Usually photos are evaluated not only for the reality that they've captured, but also how hard it was to take that photo. In the case of Pluto's high-resolution photos, there are maybe billion dollars behind it and hundreds of people that worked for years before actually the photo has been taken.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  According to this page [0], which links to a broken link on NASA's site as source, it was "only" $720 million, not billions. I only mention it to underscore that our intuition on the cost of NASA is often wrong. You see a lot of people complaining about the relevance of spending on NASA, when they actually represent a very small part of the overall budget and they spend the money very well. In contrast, Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion, tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion, Microsoft bought Mojang for $2.5 billion. Maybe it's a sign we aren't taxing them enough, if apparently there is enough money to go around for toys but not NASA. [0] http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/14/Here-s-What-It-Cost-Send-NASA-s-New-Horizons-Pluto http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/14/Here-s-What-It-Cost...
  - mikeash 11y ago
    It's pretty amazing how cheap that is. For $720 million, they built a half-ton spacecraft, launched it into space, sent it on a path out of the solar system, tracked and guided it all the way, and had it gather about a million times more data than existed before about a particular small icy body billions of miles away. To put it into perspective, that's about what it would cost to buy two A380 airliners. Two. You can buy two airliners that are not much different from the ones that existed 40 years ago, but that happen to be somewhat larger and carry some more people, and then have to spend even more money to operate them, or for the same money NASA can do an entire mission to Pluto from start to finish. Or for a different perspective, for the cost of the B-2 program (an airplane which basically never had a mission, whose key feature probably doesn't work anymore, and which in any case is far too expensive and precious to risk in any environment where there's the slightest chance it could be shot down), assuming costs would be the same as Pluto, NASA could send seven missions each to every planet in the Solar System including Pluto. For yet another perspective, it's about 1/9th the cost of the Washington Metro's Silver Line product. So, one mission each to every planet in the Solar system including Pluto, or 60 miles of railroad track and 11 light-rail stations. It's not a sign that people aren't being taxed enough, it's a sign that NASA is a bastion of amazing efficiency and capability in a sea of unbelievable waste.
verytrivial 11y ago
A little over a century ago, this object was a hypothesis. The existence of this vivid image provides a peek into the vastness and variety of space, a humbling perspective on what dedicated people are capable of, and more broadly a clarion endorsement of the scientific method itself. Please pay attention.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
chestervonwinch 11y ago
Pluto is 7.5 billion kilometers away. Let that sink in while you look at the photo.
- verandaguy 11y ago
  While it doesn't take away from the magnitude of sending a grand piano-sized suite of instruments and cameras to Pluto, both the planetoid and the NH probe are actually closer to 5 billion km away[0][1]. Pluto does indeed have an aphelion at some 7,311,000,000km (~48 AU), but its eccentric orbit means that its perihelion is about 20 AU closer to the Sun than its aphelion. [0]http://spaceprob.es/newhorizons/ [1]http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Where-is-New-Horizons/index.php
domfletcher 11y ago
It's just a representation of a collection of photons taken at a particular point in time and space. ... Context is everything
Raphmedia 11y ago
It is a photo, taken from a camera that we shot out of our atmosphere -- defeating gravity -- got to the depth of our solar system, with the sole purpose of photographing an icy rock. Pretty neat if you ask me!
DanBC 11y ago
Pluto is very small (radius 1,185 km), and very far away (about 7.5 billion km from Earth). Being able to take a photograph of it is a significant achievement. Being able to show features of the landscape? It's amazing. Here's a nice page that describes a demonstration of the distance to scale. http://www.noao.edu/education/work/Peppercorn/Peppercorn_Main.html http://www.noao.edu/education/work/Peppercorn/Peppercorn_Mai...
deathcakes 11y ago
Because this is the furthest away from Earth that we've managed to photograph in any real detail. Because exploration. I really get depressed reading comments like yours, and I don't mean to have a go at you, I understand where you're coming from. It just upsets me that you can look at the product of an over ten year mission and dismiss it with such casual disdain, as if this isn't something that is literally at the limits of what we as a species can do. This is what we were meant to do, what we are programmed to do since birth - explore. The reason it depresses me is because an overwhelming majority think like you - liek wtf is roks innit who cares. And this is why we spend so much time and effort on inwardly focussed nonsense and no time at all, given what we could do, on exploration and actual achievement. So yeah. It is just rocks and ice. You are right. By so observing, however, you have missed the point so completely that you have made me sad for the entire human species. Well done.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Furthermore, some "rocks" may be water ice and the "ice" is probably nitrogen ice, so it's not even ordinary rocks and ice.
mikeash 11y ago
What sort of candidate photo would you find more interesting than this one?
- samnole 11y ago
  For example, this one looks far more interesting. http://imgur.com/C4pU18l http://imgur.com/C4pU18l
  - mikeash 11y ago
    As much as we might want him to be, Donald Trump is not an astronomical object.

While other have insisted on how that photo is a technology feast, taken from billions of miles away, from something we have never seen before, it's also breathtaking from what it shows: a multilayered atmosphere, completely unique in the Solar System; mountains of water ice next to vast plains of what may be ice nitrogen, also features never seen before on any other body of the Solar System. Before July, many people thought that maybe we would see just another round rock full of craters, ala Mercury, nobody expected what we see now. How many times in your adult life a photo has shown you something that you could never have imagined before? On top of that, the backlit quality of the photo makes the relief jump at you in a staggering way. It's not like the pictures taken from above, where you can see the same features from very high, in a detached way. Here the landscape just feel real, like if you were there looking at it. Also it gives a sense of the size of the mountains, especially compared to the curvature of the horizon.

bad-joke 11y ago
Weirdly, the light is what surprises me the most. I always thought the surface of Pluto was cloaked in eternal night because the sun is so far away. Turns out high noon on Pluto is more or less as bright as twilight on Earth! Check your local "Pluto time" here: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/plutotime/ http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/plutotime/

jameshart 11y ago

Except, it's in a temperature regime so alien to us that your assumptions on seeing those 'rocks and ice' are very wrong. The 'rocks' are water ice. The 'ice' is frozen nitrogen. Nobody thought Pluto would have a dynamic weather system - a climate. And yet it seems to have a glacial nitrogen precipitation cycle. The geological forms look familiar. The mechanisms are not. That's pretty incredible.

noja 11y ago

It's a first-of-a-kind high quality photo of a planet which we have never seen before! (What would be exciting for you, out of interest?)

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
It's the first-of-a-kind photo from a probe which flew across most of the solar system and skimmed the target at a range of 7,750 miles while travelling at nearly 31,000 mph. And sent back images using about the same ambient light as a slightly cloudy evening on Earth. With no motion blur. That's not just exciting - it's an amazing feat of engineering.

drinchev 11y ago

Usually photos are evaluated not only for the reality that they've captured, but also how hard it was to take that photo. In the case of Pluto's high-resolution photos, there are maybe billion dollars behind it and hundreds of people that worked for years before actually the photo has been taken.

moron4hire 11y ago
According to this page [0], which links to a broken link on NASA's site as source, it was "only" $720 million, not billions. I only mention it to underscore that our intuition on the cost of NASA is often wrong. You see a lot of people complaining about the relevance of spending on NASA, when they actually represent a very small part of the overall budget and they spend the money very well. In contrast, Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion, tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion, Microsoft bought Mojang for $2.5 billion. Maybe it's a sign we aren't taxing them enough, if apparently there is enough money to go around for toys but not NASA. [0] http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/14/Here-s-What-It-Cost-Send-NASA-s-New-Horizons-Pluto http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/14/Here-s-What-It-Cost...
- mikeash 11y ago
  It's pretty amazing how cheap that is. For $720 million, they built a half-ton spacecraft, launched it into space, sent it on a path out of the solar system, tracked and guided it all the way, and had it gather about a million times more data than existed before about a particular small icy body billions of miles away. To put it into perspective, that's about what it would cost to buy two A380 airliners. Two. You can buy two airliners that are not much different from the ones that existed 40 years ago, but that happen to be somewhat larger and carry some more people, and then have to spend even more money to operate them, or for the same money NASA can do an entire mission to Pluto from start to finish. Or for a different perspective, for the cost of the B-2 program (an airplane which basically never had a mission, whose key feature probably doesn't work anymore, and which in any case is far too expensive and precious to risk in any environment where there's the slightest chance it could be shot down), assuming costs would be the same as Pluto, NASA could send seven missions each to every planet in the Solar System including Pluto. For yet another perspective, it's about 1/9th the cost of the Washington Metro's Silver Line product. So, one mission each to every planet in the Solar system including Pluto, or 60 miles of railroad track and 11 light-rail stations. It's not a sign that people aren't being taxed enough, it's a sign that NASA is a bastion of amazing efficiency and capability in a sea of unbelievable waste.

verytrivial 11y ago

A little over a century ago, this object was a hypothesis. The existence of this vivid image provides a peek into the vastness and variety of space, a humbling perspective on what dedicated people are capable of, and more broadly a clarion endorsement of the scientific method itself. Please pay attention.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

chestervonwinch 11y ago

Pluto is 7.5 billion kilometers away. Let that sink in while you look at the photo.

verandaguy 11y ago
While it doesn't take away from the magnitude of sending a grand piano-sized suite of instruments and cameras to Pluto, both the planetoid and the NH probe are actually closer to 5 billion km away[0][1]. Pluto does indeed have an aphelion at some 7,311,000,000km (~48 AU), but its eccentric orbit means that its perihelion is about 20 AU closer to the Sun than its aphelion. [0]http://spaceprob.es/newhorizons/ [1]http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Where-is-New-Horizons/index.php

domfletcher 11y ago

It's just a representation of a collection of photons taken at a particular point in time and space. ... Context is everything

Raphmedia 11y ago

It is a photo, taken from a camera that we shot out of our atmosphere -- defeating gravity -- got to the depth of our solar system, with the sole purpose of photographing an icy rock. Pretty neat if you ask me!

DanBC 11y ago

Pluto is very small (radius 1,185 km), and very far away (about 7.5 billion km from Earth). Being able to take a photograph of it is a significant achievement. Being able to show features of the landscape? It's amazing. Here's a nice page that describes a demonstration of the distance to scale. http://www.noao.edu/education/work/Peppercorn/Peppercorn_Main.html http://www.noao.edu/education/work/Peppercorn/Peppercorn_Mai...

deathcakes 11y ago

Because this is the furthest away from Earth that we've managed to photograph in any real detail. Because exploration. I really get depressed reading comments like yours, and I don't mean to have a go at you, I understand where you're coming from. It just upsets me that you can look at the product of an over ten year mission and dismiss it with such casual disdain, as if this isn't something that is literally at the limits of what we as a species can do. This is what we were meant to do, what we are programmed to do since birth - explore. The reason it depresses me is because an overwhelming majority think like you - liek wtf is roks innit who cares. And this is why we spend so much time and effort on inwardly focussed nonsense and no time at all, given what we could do, on exploration and actual achievement. So yeah. It is just rocks and ice. You are right. By so observing, however, you have missed the point so completely that you have made me sad for the entire human species. Well done.

nitrogen 11y ago
Furthermore, some "rocks" may be water ice and the "ice" is probably nitrogen ice, so it's not even ordinary rocks and ice.

mikeash 11y ago

What sort of candidate photo would you find more interesting than this one?

samnole 11y ago
For example, this one looks far more interesting. http://imgur.com/C4pU18l http://imgur.com/C4pU18l
- mikeash 11y ago
  As much as we might want him to be, Donald Trump is not an astronomical object.