Where New Horizons is

[makc]

[b][color=#0000FF]Distances of the nearest stars from 20,000 years ago until 80,000 years in the future. Proxima Centauri is in yellow[/color][/b]

---

Look, those stars are getting really close soon. What is it, if not the invitation? We must get ready!

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[neufer]

Look, those stars are getting really close soon. What is it, if not the invitation? We must get ready!

Let's send an orbiter to Uranus first. It's 10,000 times closer.

[geckzilla]

Uranus will get skipped because most astronomers are unwilling to endure the juvenile snickering any discussions about the planet evoke. Neptune is the next target.

[Beyond]

Temptation-temptation-temptation. Resistance is futile. NO I quickly click the little white x in the red box at the upper r

[neufer]

Uranus will get skipped because most astronomers are unwilling to endure the juvenile snickering any discussions about the planet evoke. Neptune is the next target.

A number of missions to Uranus have been proposed.

<<A number of missions to Uranus have been proposed. Scientists from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom have proposed the joint NASA–ESA Uranus Pathfinder mission to Uranus. A call for a medium-class (M-class) mission to the planet to be launched in 2022 was submitted to the ESA in December 2010 with the signatures of 120 scientists from across the globe. The ESA caps the cost of M-class missions at €470 million.

Another mission to Uranus, dubbed HORUS, was designed by the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University. The proposal is for a nuclear-powered orbiter carrying a set of instruments, including an imaging camera, spectrometers and a magnetometer. The mission would launch in April 2021, arriving at Uranus 17 years later. The minimum duration of the HORUS mission is two years.

In 2009, a team of planetary scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory advanced possible designs for a solar-powered Uranus orbiter. The most favorable launch window for such a probe would be in August 2018, with arrival at Uranus in September 2030. The science package may include magnetometers, particle detectors and, possibly, an imaging camera.

In the 2011 decadal survey for the future potential of planetary exploration, the United States National Research Council recommended a Uranus orbiter and probe. However, this mission is considered to be lower-priority than future missions to Mars and the Jovian system.

<<NASA has researched several mission possibilities for Cassini–Huygens-like missions to this planet, but because of budgetary and other constraints these have not been approved. It is known that any future mission will have radioisotope thermoelectric generators and similar instrumentation to Voyager craft, but with more cameras and storage capacity; and will need better error correction than Voyager.>>

[geckzilla]

As if any of those could ever get past proposal stage!

[BMAONE23]

Will the development of an Uranul Probe make us more like the Gray's?

[orin stepanek]

Will the development of an Uranul Probe make us more like the Gray's?

I thought of a few oneliners to go with your question---! Example; my doctor doesn't do that any more; they can tell from the blood work!

[Nitpicker]

So many bad jokes (past and future) could have been avoided if the boffins of the day had just gone with the un-Latinised Greek Ouranos, or even the Roman Caelus.

I was perfectly content with the re-classification of Pluto as a Dwarf Planet. The decision was reasonable.

Equally reasonable would be the re-naming of Uranus.

[geckzilla]

It would be a lot easier to pronounce it appropriately if it were spelled differently. As it is, people just look at you funny if you try to tell them "It's supposed to be pronounced OO ran us!"

[Beyond]

Really??

[Nitpicker]

Just found this video:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Not only is it extremely well produced and argued, it is also very funny.

[neufer]

Not only is it extremely well produced and argued, it is also very funny.

In the U.S. Ouranus (a.k.a., the Boston Tea Party) would not be happy with the name King George.

[BMAONE23]

Lying on it's side like that though...Hmmm....Where did the Gastrointerologist go with that scope

[neufer]

Lying on it's side like that though...Hmmm....Where did the Gastrointerologist go with that scope

[b][color=#FF0000]True-color and false-color image of Uranus. Image credit: NASA/JPL[/color][/b]

---

Weather on Uranus
by Fraser Cain on October 3, 2008

<<We understand the weather on Earth. The Sun heats the air at the equator, causing it to rise. The warm air goes to the poles, cools down and sinks, and then circulates back. Scientists call this Hadley Circulation. The weather on Uranus works very differently. This is because Uranus is tilted over onto its side, rotating at an angle of 99-degrees.

Over the course of its 84-year orbit, the north pole of Uranus is facing towards the Sun, and the south pole is in total darkness. And then the situation reverses for the rest of the planet’s journey around the Sun. Instead of heating the clouds at the equator, the Sun heats up one pole, and then the other. You would expect the pole facing the Sun to warm up, and to have air currents move towards the other pole.

But this isn’t what happens. The weather on Uranus follows an identical pattern to what we see on Jupiter and Saturn. The weather systems are broken up into bands that rotate around the planet. While Uranus has a completely different tilt from Jupiter and Saturn, it does have internal heat rising up from within. It appears that this internal heat plays a much bigger role in creating the planet’s weather system than the heat from the Sun. Although less than Jupiter and Saturn, the wind speeds on Uranus can reach 900 km/hour, and seem to be changing as the planet approaches its equinox – when the rings are seen edge on.>>

[orin stepanek]

New Horizons is now less than 600 days from closest encounter with Pluto! http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

[neufer]

New Horizons is now less than 600 days from closest encounter with Pluto! http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/

<<Dawn is a space probe launched by NASA on September 27, 2007, to study the two most massive objects of the asteroid belt – the protoplanet Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. It is scheduled to arrive at Ceres in February 2015, five months prior to the arrival of New Horizons at Pluto; Dawn will thus be the first mission to study a dwarf planet at close range. Dawn's mission profile calls for it to enter orbit around Ceres at an initial altitude of 5,900 km.>>

<<New Horizons is a space probe launched by NASA on 19 January 2006 to study the dwarf planet Pluto and the Kuiper belt. It is expected to be the first spacecraft to fly by and study Pluto and its moons, Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx, with an estimated (closest distance ~10,000 km) arrival date at the Pluto–Charon system of 14 July 2015.>>

[Nitpicker]

<<Dawn is a space probe launched by NASA on September 27, 2007, to study the two most massive objects of the asteroid belt – the protoplanet Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. It is scheduled to arrive at Ceres in February 2015, five months prior to the arrival of New Horizons at Pluto; Dawn will thus be the first mission to study a dwarf planet at close range. Dawn's mission profile calls for it to enter orbit around Ceres at an initial altitude of 5,900 km.>>

<<New Horizons is a space probe launched by NASA on 19 January 2006 to study the dwarf planet Pluto and the Kuiper belt. It is expected to be the first spacecraft to fly by and study Pluto and its moons, Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx, with an estimated (closest distance ~10,000 km) arrival date at the Pluto–Charon system of 14 July 2015.>>

I hope they both make it in good time, but no one should be counting chickens just yet. I must admit, after photographing the apparent path of Pluto earlier this year, over a period of weeks around its Eastern Quadrature, I'm quite excited about New Horizons. It is amazing to me that a few pixels captured on a DSLR sensor with the aid of a small telescope, can generate such excitement. Maybe I need a hobby? No ... wait ...

[Beyond]

Counting chickens Shouldn't that be counting puppies

[Nitpicker]

Counting chickens Shouldn't that be counting puppies

Puppies? Huh?

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_milkma ... tern_fable

A different version was versified by Jefferys Taylor as "The Milkmaid" in his Aesop in Rhyme (1820). As in Bonaventure des Périers' telling, the bulk of the poem is given over to the long reckoning of prices. It ends with the maid toppling her pail by superciliously tossing her head in rejection of her former humble circumstances. The moral on which Taylor ends his poem is 'Reckon not your chickens before they are hatched’, where a later collection has 'Count not...'

[neufer]

Counting chickens Shouldn't that be counting puppies

One of Pluto's pups is Kerberos so one might not want to just count heads.

[Beyond]

Wouldn't the not counting heads be because of Hydra

[BMAONE23]

You're probably OK either way as long as you don't try to NIX the idea

[Beyond]

Yes, we should STYX to it.

[neufer]

Wouldn't the not counting heads be because of Hydra

You're probably OK either way as long as you don't try to NIX the idea

Yes, we should STYX to it.

Thanks for Charon, guys.