Astronomy Picture of the Day - Pluto at Night

By Free Republic | Created at 2024-11-16 20:42:24 | Updated at 2024-11-23 17:07:10 6 days ago

Astronomy Picture of the Day - Pluto at Night
NASA ^ | 16 Nov, 2024 | Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research Institute

Posted on 11/16/2024 12:29:12 PM PST by MtnClimber

Explanation: The night side of Pluto spans this shadowy scene. In the stunning spacebased perspective the Sun is 4.9 billion kilometers (almost 4.5 light-hours) behind the dim and distant world. It was captured by far flung New Horizons in July of 2015 when the spacecraft was at a range of some 21,000 kilometers from Pluto, about 19 minutes after its closest approach. A denizen of the Kuiper Belt in dramatic silhouette, the image also reveals Pluto's tenuous, surprisingly complex layers of hazy atmosphere. Near the top of the frame the crescent twilight landscape includes southern areas of nitrogen ice plains now formally known as Sputnik Planitia and rugged mountains of water-ice in the Norgay Montes.

TOPICS: Astronomy; Astronomy Picture of the Day; Society
KEYWORDS: apod; nasa

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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

1 posted on 11/16/2024 12:29:12 PM PST by MtnClimber

To: MtnClimber

2 posted on 11/16/2024 12:29:28 PM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)

To: 21stCenturion; 21twelve; 4everontheRight; A Navy Vet; abb; AFB-XYZ; AFPhys; Agatsu77; ...

Pinging the APOD list

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

3 posted on 11/16/2024 12:30:09 PM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)

To: MtnClimber

Pluto. Roman God of the underworld. Plutonium, the element of death and destruction. As it turned out it was also the power source for the probe that took this picture.

4 posted on 11/16/2024 12:34:01 PM PST by Nateman (Democrats did not strive for fraud friendly voting merely to continue honest elections.)

To: MtnClimber

5 posted on 11/16/2024 12:38:56 PM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion, or satire, or both.)

To: MtnClimber

Ooooooooooooooo. Pics of Pluto, no matter the distance or the angle, have always looked sort of menacing and foreboding to me.

One doesn’t wanna mess with Pluto. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is in deep doo-doo (he should be, anyway).

6 posted on 11/16/2024 12:39:48 PM PST by AFB-XYZ (Two options: 1) Stand up, or 2) Bend over)

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