New Horizons Pluto Flyby

[PhilD]

Hope they get piccies in the pre programmed 2 hour slot from the $700 million spacecraft, blasted off in 2006, going at 10 times the speed of a bullet, 9 miles per second, 30,000 mph, 1 million miles per day, it is the fastest man made object ever to leave Earth.

Pluto is 25 times further away than Mars.

Flyby today 12/50 BST, signal return tomorrow 01/53 BST, Sky at night TV 20th July, also programmed on National Geographic 13/07/15.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33517532

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-missi ... d-on-pluto

[deepseeker]

....it is the fastest man made object ever to leave Earth.

you obviously have not seen Pops when it's his round..

[PhilD]

Like it

[Old Git John]

Cannot wait for the images, I need to think about my next holiday.

[Puffin]

This is NASA's official Facebook page with the latest image before closest fly by. https://www.facebook.com/NASA?fref=nf The next lot will be released Wednesday.

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[PhilD]

I think the Saxons have been there I can see some rings and dots.

Nat Geo +1 9pm tonight

[Puffin]

Care of Uncle George Taki.

11202847_1308548119174638_1514595897182161735_n.jpg (21.73 KiB) Viewed 16491 times

[dig-it-pete]

I wondered how it got it's name

[PhilD]

The name Pluto, after the god of the underworld, was proposed by Venetia Burney (1918–2009), a then eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England, who was interested in classical mythology.[38] She suggested it in a conversation with her grandfather Falconer Madan, a former librarian at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library, who passed the name to astronomy professor Herbert Hall Turner, who cabled it to colleagues in the United States.[38]

The object was officially named on 24 March 1930.[39][40] Each member of the Lowell Observatory was allowed to vote on a short-list of three: Minerva (which was already the name for an asteroid), Cronus (which had lost reputation through being proposed by the unpopular astronomer Thomas Jefferson Jackson See), and Pluto. Pluto received every vote.[41] The name was announced on 1 May 1930.[38] Upon the announcement, Madan gave Venetia £5 (equivalent to £282, or $430 USD in 2015),[42] as a reward.[38]

The choice of name was partly inspired by the fact that the first two letters of Pluto are the initials of Percival Lowell, and Pluto's astronomical symbol (♇, unicode U+2647, ♇) is a monogram constructed from the letters 'PL'.[43] Pluto's astrological symbol resembles that of Neptune (Neptune symbol.svg), but has a circle in place of the middle prong of the trident (Pluto's astrological symbol.svg).

The name was soon embraced by wider culture. In 1930, Walt Disney was apparently inspired by it when he introduced for Mickey Mouse a canine companion named Pluto, although Disney animator Ben Sharpsteen could not confirm why the name was given.[44] In 1941, Glenn T. Seaborg named the newly created element plutonium after Pluto, in keeping with the tradition of naming elements after newly discovered planets, following uranium, which was named after Uranus, and neptunium, which was named after Neptune.[45]

Most languages use the name "Pluto" in various transliterations.[h] In Japanese, Houei Nojiri suggested the translation Meiōsei (冥王星?, "Star of the King (God) of the Underworld"), and this was borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese.[46][47][48] Some Indian languages use the name Pluto, but others, such as Hindi, use the name of Yama, the Guardian of Hell in Hindu and Buddhist mythology, as does Vietnamese.[47] Polynesian languages also tend to use the indigenous god of the underworld, as in Maori Whiro.[47]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto

How did Pluto and its moons get their names?

The Romans named the five planets closest to the Sun after their most important gods. These were the only planets that were bright enough for them to see. Later, when telescopes were used, other planets were discovered. Astronomers decided to continue naming the planets after Roman gods. At the time of Pluto's discovery, it was considered to be a planet (it is now classified as a dwarf planet). Being very cold and the farthest from the Sun, Pluto was named after the Roman god of death. According to Roman myth, when someone died, they traveled down to the Underworld. First, they had to cross the River of the Dead, called the river Styx. Everyone was buried with a coin, to pay the ferryman, Charon, who would carry the dead across the river Styx in his boat. Pluto's moon is named Charon after this ferryman of the Underworld. The naming of Pluto's other moons follows this same basic scheme -- Nix is the Greek goddess of darkness and night and mother of Charon, Hydra is the nine-headed serpent which battled Hercules, Kerberos is many-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the underworld in Greek mythology, and Styx is the river that souls had to cross over to get to Hades, or the underworld, and the goddess who ruled over it. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is the final arbiter in naming celestial objects.

http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/ ... eir-names-

[PhilD]

It will take 16 months to transmit all the thousands of images and measurements taken back to earth;

http://www.theguardian.com/science/live ... 3008f13bc8

[dig-it-pete]

WOW!

[popsandme]

....it is the fastest man made object ever to leave Earth.

you obviously have not seen Pops when it's his round..

is no thread safe.............stooooopidedest statement of the day #1!!

[dig-it-pete]

You seem to be getting the hang of this 'Full Administration' role fairly quickly Pops

[deepseeker]

....it is the fastest man made object ever to leave Earth.

you obviously have not seen Pops when it's his round..

is no thread safe.............stooooopidedest statement of the day #1!!

[popsandme]

the dark side closed for good not too long ago lololololol