Space exploration has come a long way since Clyde Tombaugh first discovered Pluto back in 1930.

I think I bought it through my school's book club. It was pretty interesting to me at the time.

It was part of the Scholastic book series.

It may still be floating around somewhere in our family.

The next pics will show a rainbow flag next to the heart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been looking at it at the NASA site, but you can't comment there, and I have some observations and questions. Thank you for posting it here! Maybe someone here can answer my questions.

First of all, this image reminds me of the pennies I placed on the railroad tracks behind the house when I was a kid, for the trains to run over and squish flat. Why does this planet have a rim (like a coin)?

I do not see a heart! They mentioned the "heart shape" at the NASA site, too. Where is this heart-shape?

What I see is a big and rather strange square white shape attached to a crescent moon-like shape, which together look like a toy tugboat tilted sideways, from about 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock in the image. No heart.

What could possibly be making this SQUARE white shape? It's quite extreme, even in fuzzy focus. So is the very dark shape, shaped like a sickle, from 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock. The contrast between the two is extraordinary. The white square can't be clouds. Clouds don't DO that, no matter what they are made of.

I find this to be a VERY STRANGE picture. Even if what we are looking at is a murky atmosphere, it just doesn't compute (in my brain). Pluto's other angle (at the NASA site) shows even stranger features--four evenly-spaced dark ovals lined up like bathtubs at a spa (but about 300 miles wide).

I read an explanation at phys.org as to why the pictures so far are so fuzzy. I was thinking that we have these spectacular Hubble pictures, in sharp detail, of supernova gas clouds, galaxies and clusters of galaxies, billions of miles away. No fuzziness. The explanation was that Pluto is so small, and the camera is still so far away, that a clear image is not possible (but will be later).

Any thoughts from scientists here, on this truly amazing NASA achievement?--the first photos of Pluto! Wow! And such a mystery!

keep in mind that the recent pictures are much much better than what Hubble has gotten of Pluto - sure New Horizons is a lot closer to the planet, but it also needs stuff that the Hubble doesn't, like an engine and fuel, and the mission is very different

This is truly yet another mindboggling achievement by NASA. And it would be a mindboggling achievement even if the mission were to suddenly fail tomorrow. The hazards of a 9-year mission to the outer solar system are staggering. The information already achieved from New Horizon's various instruments, to be studied later, is amazing, as is the knowledge gained from sending delicate scientific instruments to Pluto on a tight "austerity" budget. I was just wondering why Hubble takes sharply detailed photos of objects billions of light years away but neither Hubble, in earth orbit, nor New Horizons, approaching Pluto, can focus on Pluto at a distance (the distance from earth, in the case of Hubble; the distance that New Horizons was from Pluto a few days ago). It's a scientific question, not a complaint.

Imagine a camera working at all, at the distance that New Horizon has had to travel! Imagine any camera working in space, even Hubble! Remotely, operated from earth (and, in New Horizon's case, with a four hour communications delay!) NASA represents the best of human genius!

Do you see a heart? (I can't figure out what they're talking about; my eyes don't see a heart shape.)

What do you make of the photos of Pluto so far? What of that strange big white square? Could that be a pixel/camera problem, not a real shape on Pluto?

look at the right-bottom quarter of the planet, the heart shape is in white

Since the data we're getting now is very preliminary and I'm not working the project, I'm reserving analysis for the orbital views which will be coming soon, and which will blow away the quality of the pictures we'll get on approach.

I don't see a heart at all.

Rorschach test, I guess.

I misread the OP as saying the photo was from 8 km away, and I was like

Wha . . . ? Huh?

How tiny is Pluto if you can see the whole thing from 8 km away?

And . . . why is it so fuzzy if the photo was taken from 8 km away?



Now it's all becoming very clear.

They have a shitload of used D10's up there

low light conditions they are working in so the exposures have to be long too.

Already interesting to me. Many people thought Pluto would just look like a bigger asteroid, but this picture clearly refutes that. Super cool.

So many earlier pictures made Pluto look like it wasn't truly round. Sort of wobbling around. These recent pictures make it clear that is completely round and planet shaped.

I'm not on either side of whether it should be called a planet but because of its strange orbit, I have no problem if it is determined to not be a "real" planet but some other type of solar system object. It is the orbit that doesn't align with the other planets that make me question whether it is truly a planet more than anything else.

Thanks for the thread, brooklynite.