Science & Reason on Facebook: tinyurl.com Hubble’s Universe Unfiltered 15: Changing Views of Pluto While it may seem that the astronomy community’s views on Pluto changed radically with its reclassification in 2006, the truth is that our understanding of Pluto has always been shifting. This small, icy world in the distant reaches of the solar system is so difficult to observe that, even with Hubble’s keen resolution, it only shows up as a few pixels in an image. Only with patience, lots of observations, and huge amounts of computing power have we been able to create approximate surface maps of Pluto and discover some surprising alterations to its surface. Improved imagery yields improved insight. We now comprehend Pluto’s place within the solar system, and the exploration of that region has really just begun. Hubble’s Universe Unfiltered is a collection of video podcasts. Each episode offers an in-depth explanation of the latest news story or image from the Hubble Space Telescope, presented by astronomer Frank Summers. — Please subscribe to Science & Reason: • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com — NOTES * In the video podcast, I jokingly refer to “Percival Lowell’s Greatest Mistakes” being 1.) the claim that Mars had a civilization using canals, and 2.) the prediction of a large planet beyond Neptune. Some may recognize this phrasing as an oblique reference to similar wording used in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker series. (If you’re going …
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18Apr
Posted by Pluto @ 6:54 am
Tags: astronomy, Belt, Dwarf, horizons, Hubble, Kuiper, mission, moons, new, objects, planet, Pluto, reclassification, solar, space, surface, system, telescope, universe
25 Responses
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
Lets ask Canon to build us a billion terapixel superzoom dslr .. nasa isnt worth shit
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
Fly me to the moon…
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
An artists rendering doesn’t = science in my book.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
Very nice and informative. Best video of Pluto I have seen so far.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
Damn in a few years a craft will arrive and finally take pics of pluto
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
So what does the Kuyper Belt look like from and edge view? That is, how thick is it? Pictures always show this 2-dimensional rendering, as if it were a very thin frisbee. Are their objects in the belt that are spherically located in 3 dimensions?
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
fav. show on Best0fScience. Prof. Frank is amazing
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
In fact. take? a look at what Mars looks like through Hubble…
planetary(.)org/blog/article/00002673/
Before we had any spacecraft that travelled to Mars our best photo taken through the Hale telescope on Mt Palomar is here:
palomarskies(.)blogspot(.)com/2009/05/mars-in-august.html
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
@CriticuleMe: They know it’s Clyde’s Pluto because it’s been under almost constant surveillance since, and because to establish it was a planet (by the then definition) Clyde had to establish the orbital parameters which serve to locate it at any point in the past or future.
There are plenty of people scanning for more Kuiper belt objects. The number is in the hundreds now.
The ancients had a “thing” for 12.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
haha Pluto is anarecsic planet. XD
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
Haha, before he mentioned it, It reminded me of those now ancient maps of mars, that’s just telling of how much more powerful of telescopes we now need.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
@thatamazinggeek Humans just tend to be the extremely egotistical ape
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
@charlesfloyb It is a Dwarf Planet
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
@boyd1876 I can think of a two likely reasons. Either none of the missions (Voyager 1 and 2, Pioneer 10 and 11) flew near enough of Pluto to get good pictures (New Horizons has to be within six months of Pluto to get better data than Hubble) or all of them had their cameras powered off after leaving Neptune to conserve energy.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
Anyone have an idea why voyager couldn’t have snapped a picture of pluto?
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
4 people are sad because ther aren’t kanals on mars
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
dwarf planet, planetoid object (diminutive and planet like) or a kuiper belt object would all be acceptable at this point.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
@charlesfloyb dwarf planet!!
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
@bradwatson7324 Thats too big to be a space station…
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
What is Pluto classified as? It’s not a planet. Ok, that tells us what it isn’t. I don’t think it’s a dwarf planet. What is it?
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
@puncheex – Was it the same, we have some dark spots and we have some light spots… and that bit, sorry… i spilled some coffee on that bit. hehe.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
@deadman12078: Yup. Do the math.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
@coopersnoop: heh… They got real close to naming Neptune “George”.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
@TheSpankymonkey: Go take a look at the very best guesses we had of what Mars looked like before Mariner got there. I remember being absolutely stunned when I saw the first close photos (yeah, I’m that old…). No one had any idea that there were mountains there, or the valley.
April 18th, 2011 at 6:54 am
Here’s hoping we discover the Charron Relay in 2015.