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First high quality REAL stereo image of Pluto.

I had an unforgettable 3 days with the amazing New Horizons team. I’m still ‘coming down’. Alan Stern, leader of the Science Team at APL in Laurel, Maryland, personally made sure I was treated like one of the family, as a collaborator, and I felt privileged to the nth degree.

I was, of course, as always, obsessed with finding stereoscopic opportunities while I was there, and the Gods of the Underworld must have been with me, because I was there when the first 2 by 2 mosaic full-planet picture was downloaded from the probe, and assembled into exactly the required highish res partner to the iconic ‘last-look’ photo which preceded the final fly-by. Baseline must be a few hundred thousand miles, but I’ll need to check that. Of course the New Horizons guys were already doing serious science on this image as it arrived, but I was able to assemble the two images to make the most satisfying stereo view I can ever remember making. I got some help making some prints on site, so I was able to show this 3-D to the entire team through the lenses of some OWLS I took over.

So this is definitely the first REAL high quality stereo image of Pluto in history. And we can say it’s officially NH approved !

No fiddling this time. The right image is the ‘last-look’ photo from 15th July, and the left image is the ‘two-by-two downloaded from NH on the 17th.

All I did was fine-adjust the orientations to match up, and match up the colouring by eye.

ENJOY !

Photos courtesy of NASA, stereo by Bri.

If you’ve been following the New Horizons mission closely, you’ll have seen Amy Teitel’s Pluto in a Minute videos. Well, before I left, we did one together, which I think will make you smile. It features this stereo view, so now you can see it as she saw it at that moment (we got a good ‘wow!’).

We’ll post up a link to that vid as soon as we have it.

Cheers

Bri

I’m still reeling from the ridiculous week we just had, combating a ridiculous piece of skulduggery from our Government.

What a waste of decent people’s time. But it is done, for now. And done well, for now, methinks.

I missed my rendezvous with the Pluto NewHorizons team in Washington DC because I thought the threat to our wildlife (actually ALL our wildlife, as it turns out) in the UK was more of a priority. But now I get to go and celebrate with the NH team who have just successfully pulled off a nine-year project to rendezvous with that little PLANET at the edge of the classical Solar System. I’m well excited. I’m ready to meet lots of great space scientists that I’ve previously only known through E-mails – and sift through data with them. Yes, I feel very privileged. In these things, like my dear ol’ adopted uncle, Patrick Moore, I’m an enthusiastic amateur, since nobody is paying me ! But I’m well aware millions would pay dearly for such a journey … fulfilling many schoolboy dreams.

As an amateur image processor, this is what I put together in 3-D on the plane … a fanciful fabrication, but based on the latest NH pics, and I think it’s the first time it’s been done. A speculative look at what it would have been like to be standing near the New Horizons probe as it flashed past Pluto and its companion Charon towards deep Kuiper Belt country. Yes, if you’re not familiar with 3-D Free-viewing, please find an OWL or other stereo viewer and enjoy this ! That’s reddish pink Pluto in the foreground with its now familiar giant heart-shaped feature, and Charon behind, showing its massive chasm and brown rocky terrain. NOBODY has ever seen Pluto like this. And it will be 10 years at least til anybody gets anything better, of course, because it takes that amount of time to get there. OK – please don’t write to me and tell me the orientation of the bodies is wrong. I know ! But it’s not far from reality, if you were a giant with eyes a million miles apart.

Bri

Yes, I still call it a planet ! Because nobody’s really satisfied me with a good enough reason to change my feelings about this. When I was very young – probably 7 or 8 years old – my Dad taught me the sequence of planets in order from the Sun outwards :

Mercury-Venus-Earth-Mars-Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune-Pluto !

And it still rings in my head as strongly as the songs that captured my thoughts in those magical days – Maybe Baby, Oh Boy, That’ll Be The Day, Lucille, Jailhouse Rock …

So for me, a spacecraft arriving at this farthest-flung outpost of the Sun’s family of captive rocks – the first time EVER mankind has achieved this – is something beyond thrilling. I may have the chance to sit with the fathers of this amazing craft, named New Horizons, in 10 days time, as it passes close by this enigmatic, bitterly cold world.

I always thought of it as ‘icy’, so in my mind, it was white or grey and shiny. But the pictures the New Horizons craft has already sent us, as it approaches the rendezvous, tell us that Pluto is actually a RED planet – a counterpart to Mars in its appearance, but for different reasons. It’s highly likely that when we see those first EVER images of Pluto viewed from only a few thousand miles away next week, we’ll see something completely unpredicted.

Meanwhile a nice animation has been created of the spinning planet by a scientist called Bjorn Jonsson – compiled from the best currently available data (mainly from New Horizons).

It’s a fascination of mine to create stereo images out of rotation movies. And in this I have been very much assisted and enabled by my pal Claudia Manzoni. Here are some stereos derived from the Jonsson model.

I think it’s specially appropriate to share these stereos right now – because very soon we will likely have images which will make these redundant for ever.

So please dust your OWLS off (or get ready to ‘Free-View’) and … ENJOY !

This first stereo shows those four dark spots in a line abreast which have made a deep impression on observers in recent days.

And this is a composite of four different aspects of the planet (OK – Dwarf Planet!) in quadrature.

The red dot is there to help us align the eyes correctly to see the four spheres in 3-D. Relax the eyes, allow the two red dots to drift together and ‘fuse’ into one, and you will see all around it the four solid views of Pluto.

It’s hard to be sure at this time whether we are looking at a hard surface here, or the tops of clouds, or a combination of both, but I’m sure all will be revealed on 14th – 15th July.

Watch this space. As with the Rosetta mission, the improvement in quality that’s about to happen is expected to be DRAMATIC!!!

Bri

Ceres stereo

SCOOP ! My pal Claudia Manzoni put together the first close-up stereo of dwarf planet Ceres EVER !!!! From the brand new pictures from NASA Dawn – published today. Enjoy !

Until the NASA’s Dawn spaceship drew close to Ceres this week, the best pictures we had of this, the largest minor planet (590 miles across) were from the Hubble Space Telescope, in orbit around the Earth. They showed little more than an indistinct blob with a noticeable bright spot, which highlighted the rotation period of the object (about 9 hours). There have been many speculations about what that bright spot could be … but no firm conclusions. These spectacular new pictures show that the bright spot is very compact, not just the floor of a crater, but much smaller and more intense, and … double ! Fascinating ! And still there is no firm conclusion as to what is causing this very bright feature. It looks temptingly like an intelligent signal, doesn’t it ?

Ceres stereo – detail

This is Astronomy as it happens !

Cheers

Bri

If you get a clear night, try looking for COMET LOVEJOY with binoculars. Here’s a map of its progress. (Ta Astronomy Now)

Bri

A lovely review of “The Cosmic Tourist” the wonderful astronomy book published by Brian, Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott, two years ago this month (11 Oct 2012).  Includes stunning pictures…

—

BOING BOING
20 October 2014 

REVIEW: The Cosmic Tourist: Visit the 100 Most Awe-Inspiring Destinations in the Universe

Open the pages of Cosmic Tourist and journey across the universe with 100 thrilling pit stops along the way.

Your itinerary starts with Planet Earth, makes stops on the moon, the sun, a comet, Mercury, resting spots through the asteroid belt, and many other cosmic sites until you end up 13,700,000,000 light years away at “Infinity and Beyond.”

Each stop offers spectacular photography and fascinating outer space facts that are written by the BBC’s “Sky at Night” astronomers Patrick Moore, Chris Lintott, and Brian May (who also happens to be the guitarist and founding member of Queen).

If you’ve often sat under the black twinkling canopy of the night sky and wondered…

– What is that mysterious glow on the night side of Venus? Or… 
– Why is the Delta Cephei, which is 887 light years away from Earth, one of the most important stars in the sky? 
– Or… What are those beautifully bright beaded interlocking rings that are floating 167,000 light-years away from us?

… then it’s time to buy your passenger ticket, er, this visually stunning book, which will captivate you with space travel for many moons to come.

Still avaiable: The Cosmic Tourist: Visit the 100 Most Awe-Inspiring Destinations
in the Universe 
by Brian May, Patrick Moore, and Chris Lintott