** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

[anything I don't mind]

Can someone please answer to me a few questions I have?

To take a photo of pluto with such detail they would have to have the sun in our solar system behind the camera to do so. Why then is all the background pitch black with no stars what so ever? Surely if they can take that much light in that they can take a photo of pluto, it should also include the light from the trillions of stars that would be in the shot?

Also how did they manage to send the images from the space craft to earth, what technology do they use to send the images?

It is my opinion that the image is a computer graphic. They may actually have a space craft in space, i don't know, if they did take a photo at that distance it would be a grainy black and white photo that would be difficult to make out what is what. So instead of publishing a realy bad photo they create a fake one. Alternatively they just fake the whole thing and pocket all the money.

 

[mrk]

The photo contains no background stars probably because the probe is floating past the planet at 30k mph and took the photo with a relatively short shutter speed compared to the long exposure times used by earth bound satellites and the even longer ones used by Hubble.

Remember those stars are not just light years away but tens of hundreds/thousands of light years away so are faint and won't show on short exposures. Basic imagery, if it long exposure then the target (Pluto) would be overexposed.

As for how it send images back? I'm sure you've heard of radio signals...

The short answer to that question is: Pluto is far away -- very far away, more than 30 times Earth's distance from the Sun -- so New Horizons' radio signal is weak. Weak signal means low data rates: at the moment, New Horizons can transmit at most 1 kilobit per second. (Note that spacecraft communications are typically measured in bits, not bytes; 1 kilobit is only 125 bytes.) Even at these low data rates, only the Deep Space Network's very largest, 70-meter dishes can detect New Horizons' faint signal.

From planetary.org, from a quick Google on the phone..

 

[Maverick2332]

Can someone please answer to me a few questions I have?

To take a photo of pluto with such detail they would have to have the sun in our solar system behind the camera to do so. Why then is all the background pitch black with no stars what so ever? Surely if they can take that much light in that they can take a photo of pluto, it should also include the light from the trillions of stars that would be in the shot?

Also how did they manage to send the images from the space craft to earth, what technology do they use to send the images?

It is my opinion that the image is a computer graphic. They may actually have a space craft in space, i don't know, if they did take a photo at that distance it would be a grainy black and white photo that would be difficult to make out what is what. So instead of publishing a realy bad photo they create a fake one. Alternatively they just fake the whole thing and pocket all the money.

BAHAHAHA Groen

 

[Malevolence]

Can someone please answer to me a few questions I have?

To take a photo of pluto with such detail they would have to have the sun in our solar system behind the camera to do so. Why then is all the background pitch black with no stars what so ever? Surely if they can take that much light in that they can take a photo of pluto, it should also include the light from the trillions of stars that would be in the shot?

Also how did they manage to send the images from the space craft to earth, what technology do they use to send the images?

It is my opinion that the image is a computer graphic. They may actually have a space craft in space, i don't know, if they did take a photo at that distance it would be a grainy black and white photo that would be difficult to make out what is what. So instead of publishing a realy bad photo they create a fake one. Alternatively they just fake the whole thing and pocket all the money.

If I were you, I'd loosen that tin-foil hat a wee bit. You have it on a tad too tight and it appears to be cutting off the blood flow to your brain.

 

[Brutal biff]

Can someone please answer to me a few questions I have?

To take a photo of pluto with such detail they would have to have the sun in our solar system behind the camera to do so. Why then is all the background pitch black with no stars what so ever? Surely if they can take that much light in that they can take a photo of pluto, it should also include the light from the trillions of stars that would be in the shot?

Also how did they manage to send the images from the space craft to earth, what technology do they use to send the images?

It is my opinion that the image is a computer graphic. They may actually have a space craft in space, i don't know, if they did take a photo at that distance it would be a grainy black and white photo that would be difficult to make out what is what. So instead of publishing a realy bad photo they create a fake one. Alternatively they just fake the whole thing and pocket all the money.

your not 1 of those who think we didn't land on the moon either?

 

[mrk]

He is !

 

[Spook187]

Can someone please answer to me a few questions I have?

To take a photo of pluto with such detail they would have to have the sun in our solar system behind the camera to do so. Why then is all the background pitch black with no stars what so ever? Surely if they can take that much light in that they can take a photo of pluto, it should also include the light from the trillions of stars that would be in the shot?

Also how did they manage to send the images from the space craft to earth, what technology do they use to send the images?

It is my opinion that the image is a computer graphic. They may actually have a space craft in space, i don't know, if they did take a photo at that distance it would be a grainy black and white photo that would be difficult to make out what is what. So instead of publishing a realy bad photo they create a fake one. Alternatively they just fake the whole thing and pocket all the money.

Which planet are you on, a computer graphic indeed lol, they have a state of the art high resolution camera on board.

 

[Brutal biff]

Hope they get the decent pics close up of pluto and the moons might be the only ones we get in our lifetime

 

[DampDog]

Hope they get the decent pics close up of pluto and the moons might be the only ones we get in our lifetime

Looks like they are off to a good start. This was downloaded Tuesday, (476,000 miles away) prior to closest approach, which I think will be 8500 ish (I would have thought we'd have seen his nose and big floppy ears by now though)

Spoiler

 

[Brutal biff]

Looks like they are off to a good start. This was downloaded Tuesday, (476,000 miles away) prior to closest approach, which I think will be 8500 ish (I would have thought we'd have seen his nose and big floppy ears by now though)

Spoiler

look at it again you can see the outline of mickeys pal

 

[DampDog]

look at it again you can see the outline of mickeys pal

LOL.. So you can...

 

[anything I don't mind]

I found the real image before NASA photoshoped the background out of the image.

 

[JRS]

*sigh*

groen, don't you get tired of being wrong?

 

[Spook187]

Yawn, come on then throw all the evidence you have at us saying the pics of pluto are all made up.
Your like a broken record when these things happen, sad little person you are.

 

[anything I don't mind]

I ran error level analysis on the image. Very suspect spot in the middle, looks like it might have been flatted out. The edges look very jagged with the background being an unbelievable empty space.

 

[Jokester]

They'll have masked out the space round Pluto to save on file size.

 

[anything I don't mind]

By comparison, a photo of the moon through a telescope taken by an iphone.

Warning image is of a large file size.

http://i.imgur.com/msTzG.jpg



First thing to notice is the noise in the background. It would be impossible to get a perfect flat background in space.

http://29a.ch/sandbox/2012/imageerrorlevelanalysis/

You can test for yourself.

 

[dlite]

http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/a...0150623_voyager_simulations_nep_data_ver2.jpg

Planetary society has a nice explanation about what gets downlinked and when.

 

[mrk]

They'll have masked out the space round Pluto to save on file size.

And then sent it back to New Horizons, then waited until NH sent it back right?

The photo doesn't contain distant space stars and galaxies because it's not a long enough exposure for the sensor to pick them up, camera basics.

 

[Jokester]

And then sent it back to New Horizons, then waited until NH sent it back right?

In case it's not in jest (and this is for Groen's benefit anyway). They'll know how big Pluto is in the shot so the processor on board will automatically reject the periphery of the shot to reduce the file size for transmission back to Earth. Empty space at Pluto looks much the same as empty space at Earth so there's no point spending precious bandwidth sending the whole of the photo back.