Credit: Eliot Young (SwRI) et al./NASA
No, Pluto's not pixelated, but the brown coloring is true color. I did find clearer images, but as far as I could tell, they were artists' renderings. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006, is on schedule to reach Pluto in 2015, so we can hope for some better images then.Maybe you've heard that Pluto was demoted awhile ago and is now considered a dwarf planet. The decision was made by a relatively small number of astronomers, so I'm skeptical that it will stick. It seems that many people are protective of the solar system's smallest planet.
It's been quite a tour we've been on to our neighboring planets, but it's time to come home. Earth is usually our point of observation, but with all the spacecraft zipping around, both manned and unmanned, it's not surprising that we now have beautiful images of our own world. First up is the iconic Earthrise:
Credit: Apollo 8/NASA
Taken in 1968 by the Apollo 8 crew, this is the first image of Earth from space and was described by photographer Galen Rowell as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken."Next is the Blue Marble:
Credit: Apollo 17 Crew/NASA
Blue Marble is possibly one of the most widely distributed photographs in the world, having been rescued from the NASA archives in the early 1980s by famine-relief and environmental groups.And here's one more view of Earth, showing Antarctica and the tip of South America:
Credit: NEAR Spacecraft Team/JHUAPL/NASA
This image, taken in representative color, comes from the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft. I like the swirling clouds, but that broad, white sheet of Antarctic ice doesn't make me want to visit there anytime soon.And finally, one last thing: a nod to the star at the center of our solar system. The sun has no part of the night sky, in that its presence in the sky defines day. Even so, it participates in lunar eclipses and provides the solar winds for the auroras and generally keeps the solar system together with its gravitational pull. So here's a closing thought about our local star from Galileo:
"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do."
