APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

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APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

Post by APOD Robot » Mon Aug 14, 2017 4:07 am

Image Charon Flyover from New Horizons

Explanation: What if you could fly over Pluto's moon Charon -- what might you see? The New Horizons spacecraft did just this in 2015 July as it zipped past Pluto and Charon with cameras blazing. The images recorded allowed for a digital reconstruction of much of Charon's surface, further enabling the creation of fictitious flights over Charon created from this data. One such fanciful, minute-long, time-lapse video is shown here with vertical heights and colors of surface features digitally enhanced. Your journey begins over a wide chasm that divides different types of Charon's landscapes, a chasm that might have formed when Charon froze through. You soon turn north and fly over a colorful depression dubbed Mordor that, one hypothesis holds, is an unusual remnant from an ancient impact. Your voyage continues over an alien landscape rich with never-before-seen craters, mountains, and crevices. The robotic New Horizons spacecraft has now been targeted at Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU 69, which it should zoom past on New Year's Day 2019.

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Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

Post by Boomer12k » Mon Aug 14, 2017 6:12 am

Nice...

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Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

Post by ta152h0 » Mon Aug 14, 2017 6:53 am

any images or points of light from the next target ?
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Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

Post by neufer » Mon Aug 14, 2017 7:54 am

ta152h0 wrote:
any images or points of light from the next target ?
https://phys.org/news/2017-04-horizons-halfway-pluto-flyby.html#jCp wrote: A KBO among the Stars: In preparation for the New Horizons flyby of 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019, the spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took a series of 10-second exposures of the background star field near the location of its target Kuiper Belt object (KBO). This composite image is made from 45 of these 10-second exposures taken on Jan. 28, 2017. The yellow diamond marks the predicted location of MU69 on approach, but the KBO itself was too far from the spacecraft (~ 6 AU) even for LORRI’s telescopic “eye” to detect. New Horizons expects to start seeing MU69 with LORRI in September of 2018 – and the team will use these newly acquired images of the background field to help prepare for that search on approach. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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    Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

    Post by DanielP » Mon Aug 14, 2017 8:46 am

    I regret that the movie author feels obliged to enhance the heights to make it more "interesting". To me the interesting aspect is to make it as realistic as possible. Fake data is just making the rendering less real, so less interesting.

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    Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

    Post by rfv » Mon Aug 14, 2017 12:21 pm

    Surely, Horizon didn't maneuver over and around Charon like this video suggests. How & why did NASA create this impression?

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    Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

    Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Aug 14, 2017 1:22 pm

    DanielP wrote:I regret that the movie author feels obliged to enhance the heights to make it more "interesting". To me the interesting aspect is to make it as realistic as possible. Fake data is just making the rendering less real, so less interesting.
    Emphasizing structure is not "fake data". There is no reason that the experience should be "realistic" if the intent isn't to produce a realistic flyover.
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    Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

    Post by neufer » Mon Aug 14, 2017 1:24 pm

    rfv wrote:
    DanielP wrote:
    I regret that the movie author feels obliged to enhance the heights to make it more "interesting". To me the interesting aspect is to make it as realistic as possible. Fake data is just making the rendering less real, so less interesting.
    Surely, Horizon didn't maneuver over and around Charon like this video suggests. How & why did NASA create this impression?
    NASA constantly generates FAR more data than it knows how to fully analyze. By massaging the data and presenting it in many different formats it is possible that someone, perhaps even some young student, will notice something that no one has noticed before.

    Besides... everyone has different esthetics on what they enjoy observing/hearing and what they don't.
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    Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

    Post by Chris Peterson » Mon Aug 14, 2017 1:30 pm

    rfv wrote:Surely, Horizon didn't maneuver over and around Charon like this video suggests. How & why did NASA create this impression?
    Simple images of other bodies in the Solar System are a primitive and limited way of seeing and understanding things. The standard approach used these days, for Earth, other planets, moons, and asteroids is to use a combination of techniques to produce a rich dataset that describes surfaces. This includes optical images, radar imaging and ranging, and spectroscopic data. From this, much more useful images can be synthesized- for instance, the angle of illumination can be changed, or the angle of viewing can be normalized. Also, flyovers like this can be generated which allow us to see things that would never be obvious in the original static imagery.
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    Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

    Post by Cousin Ricky » Mon Aug 14, 2017 4:07 pm

    Is it even physically possible for NASA to create a digital reconstruction without vertical exaggeration? It's like looking for a commercial Web site without pop-ups or a Hollywood movie that doesn't embellish the original story (I'm looking at you, Hidden Figures); they can't help themselves.

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    Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

    Post by Case » Mon Aug 14, 2017 5:35 pm

    Cousin Ricky wrote:Is it even physically possible for NASA to create a digital reconstruction without vertical exaggeration?
    If the goal is research and education, then one emphasises the things one wants the audience to look at. Suppose NASA made two versions, once accurate and one exaggerated. Which one will be used every time again on news outlets and websites? The most impressive one, and often that is not the flat one.

    I fondly remember an impressively large raised relief world map on the wall in a class room in elementary school. The exaggeration of height differences was not bothersome at all. Even then, the young minds looks for the extremes: Mt Everest in the vast Himalayan range and Tibetan Plateau, and the deep parts east of the Philippines. And how flat my local region was in comparison.

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    Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

    Post by neufer » Mon Aug 14, 2017 6:13 pm

    Case wrote:
    I fondly remember an impressively large raised relief world map on the wall in a class room in elementary school. The exaggeration of height differences was not bothersome at all. Even then, the young minds looks for the extremes: Mt Everest in the vast Himalayan range and Tibetan Plateau, and the deep parts east of the Philippines. And how flat my local region was in comparison.
    • It brought your young mind relief.
    http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=relief wrote:
    relief (n.1) late 14c., "alleviation of distress, hunger, sickness, etc; state of being relieved; that which mitigates or removes" (pain, grief, evil, etc.)," from Anglo-French relif, from Old French relief "assistance," literally "a raising, that which is lifted," from stressed stem of relever.

    relief (n.2) "projection of figure or design from a flat surface," c. 1600, from French relief, from Italian rilievo, from rilevare "to raise," from Latin relevare "to raise, lighten".

    flat (adj.) c. 1300, "stretched out (on a surface), prostrate, lying the whole length on the ground," from Old Norse flatr "flat." From c. 1400 as "without curvature or projection." Sense of "prosaic, dull" is from 1570s, on the notion of "featureless, lacking contrast." Used of musical notes from 1590s, because the tone is "lower" than a given or intended pitch.

    map (n.) 1520s, shortening of Middle English mapemounde "map of the world" (late 14c.) from Medieval Latin mappa mundi "map of the world;" first element from Latin mappa "napkin, cloth" (on which maps were drawn), "tablecloth, signal-cloth, flag," said by Quintilian to be of Punic origin (compare Talmudic Hebrew mappa, contraction of Mishnaic menaphah "a fluttering banner, streaming cloth") + Latin mundi "of the world," from mundus "universe, world" (see mundane).
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    Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

    Post by Catalina » Mon Aug 14, 2017 8:23 pm

    I LOVE the APOD site and the discussion forum--flat or enhanced!

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    Re: APOD: Charon Flyover from New Horizons (2017 Aug 14)

    Post by neufer » Mon Aug 14, 2017 11:20 pm

    Cousin Ricky wrote:
    Is it even physically possible for NASA to create a digital reconstruction without vertical exaggeration?
    ABSOLUTELY :!: :
    APOD Robot wrote:Image Ireson Hill on Mars

    Explanation: What created this unusual hill on Mars? Its history has become a topic of research, but its shape and two-tone structure makes it one of the more unusual hills that the robotic Curiosity rover on Mars has rolled near. Dubbed Ireson Hill, the mound rises about 5 meters high and spans about 15 meters across. Ireson Hill is located on the Bagnold Dune field on the slope of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater on Mars. The featured 41-image panorama has been horizontally compressed to include the entire hill. The image was taken on February 2 and released last week. Because Mars is moving behind the Sun as seen from the Earth, NASA will soon stop sending commands to its Martian orbiters and rovers until about August 1.>>
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