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**CapnAwesome** · July 1, 2015 at 12:02 pm

Anybody else super exciting to get close up pictures of Pluto in two weeks?

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/t-m...ns-n384776

I know that it got downgraded from a planet to whatever the hell it is now from the time new horizons launched to now, but as one of the people who grew up with little Pluto as the 9th planet, I'm really excited to get the first close up pictures of it and it's moon, Charon.

Ashground · July 1, 2015 at 12:10 pm

No pictures of Styx, Nix, Kerberos, or Hydra?

tonechaser77 · July 1, 2015 at 12:13 pm

Me, me!!! I've got this app on my phone...

http://app.plutosafari.com/

**CapnAwesome** · July 1, 2015 at 12:13 pm

(July 1, 2015 at 12:10 pm)Ashground Wrote: No pictures of Styx, Nix, Kerberos, or Hydra?

I don't know whether or not they will. I don't really find tiny moons all that interesting though. They normally look the same, where as large objects that are large enough to become spherical are normally super amazing and unique. I hope pluto doesn't disappoint.

**Minimalist** · July 1, 2015 at 12:17 pm

Seriously.... most of the pictures from distant objects merely look like poor real estate investments. If there were a god he is one shitty designer. Otherwise, these places would look more like Miami Beach.

**Alex K** · July 1, 2015 at 12:25 pm

Hell Yes!

Anomalocaris · July 1, 2015 at 12:32 pm

(July 1, 2015 at 12:13 pm)CapnAwesome Wrote:
(July 1, 2015 at 12:10 pm)Ashground Wrote: No pictures of Styx, Nix, Kerberos, or Hydra?

I don't know whether or not they will. I don't really find tiny moons all that interesting though. They normally look the same, where as large objects that are large enough to become spherical are normally super amazing and unique. I hope pluto doesn't disappoint.

I believe Kerberos has much lower albedo than the other small moons. This cast doubt on the hypothesis these small moons were all similar and consisted of pluto parts from a large collision.

**CapnAwesome** · July 1, 2015 at 12:55 pm

(July 1, 2015 at 12:10 pm)Ashground Wrote: No pictures of Styx, Nix, Kerberos, or Hydra?

Actually there is a real answer to this.

Quote: The Plutonian system will be visited by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015. Besides Pluto and Charon, good images should be returned of Nix. The other small moons will be imaged at lower resolution

**vorlon13** · July 1, 2015 at 1:10 pm

Had they forgone the close Titan approach at Saturn with Voyager 1, it would have been possible for that craft to have visited Pluto.

I've had mixed feelings about that decision over the years. The idea at Titan was there would be breaks in the cloud deck and Voyager could view the surface. It turns out, there are never breaks in the clouds there and to see the surface takes radar or a special infrared filter on the camera, neither of which Voyager had. So the close flyby didn't yield too much information, but it was enough to influence the design of Cassini, so there is that. Also, Voyager has pixels 16 times larger than New Horizons, so we wouldn't have had very good pictures until almost the day of the flyby at Pluto. It is possible Voyager might not have revealed one or more of the tiny moons.

Tough call either way.

LostLocke · July 1, 2015 at 1:33 pm

(July 1, 2015 at 12:02 pm)CapnAwesome Wrote: Anybody else super exciting to get close up pictures of Pluto in two weeks?

It's weird. When I first really heard of the New Horizons mission I thought, "Oh we'll see Pluto? That's cool I guess."
But now as the day is getting closer I find I actually am getting excited for it. No idea why really, but I don't care, just glad to be excited about it.

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