New Horizons-Pluto

"Wow" is the right word. What a neat little spacecraft New Horizons turned out to be.

I'm not quite old enough to remember the first planetary flyby. Mariner IV over Mars. But I remember those photos when they were only a few years old. There was only about twenty, total, if I remember right. And they were very, very crude compared to these photos.

Shortly after that the USA put a camera in orbit about the Moon. This was meant to give the best photos obtainable at that time. In order to accomplish that, the camera used 70 mm film that was then passed through an actual on-board film developing lab. It then passed by a scanner. I'm going by memory here, but I think each 'pixel' was something like 1/30 the diameter of a human hair. Something almost unbelievable like that. It took something like a couple of hours for each photo to be scanned and radioed back to Earth.

All in all, a pretty impressive machine. Yet almost like a Model T in comparison to today's probes.
 
I would like to see those hi res moon pics, bet they are amazing.

Heads-up!

Full moon coming up (super moon) and an eclipse (blood moon) should be more wow!
Sunday night Sept. 27th, starts 8:11pm eastern time, total 10:11pm, lasts for an hour 12min.
 
I suppose those 1966 Moon photos could be found at the NASA website. Or perhaps at space.com or someone like that. I've forgotten the name of that particular orbiter. But there were also landers at the same time. I think they were called "Surveyor". If you come across those photos, then you've found the 'low res' of that time.

But I don't guess that those pics would be all that impressive by today's standards. I wouldn't doubt that the Hubble telescope could do better. And I think we've got a modern orbiter there right now taking better pictures, digitally, than the film cameras of those days.

I admire NASA for being so audacious. But I doubt if the pics stand up to the stuff that's being produced today. Or in the relatively recent past.

Consider "Cassini" with it's pics actually from the surface of Titan. Or the European probe that has rendezvoused with a comet. Or that other American (?) probe that did a Ceres flyby. "Curiosity" on Mars. They're getting so numerous that I'm losing track of them.

I'm pessimistic over the prospect of it ever being profitable to send human beings exploring the Solar System. But unmanned probes are doing a terrific job of it.

It's a great time to be alive for those who are interested in such things.
 
I remember looking at USGS maps (from the 60s) in the late 80's.
Had this cool little magnifier.
Was like you were almost in the map, super cool.

All the digitization of film, (and audio) seems to loose something in translation.

Man how things have changed.

Pixel the size of 1/30th human hair, come on, that's crazy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top