Pluto Flyover from New Horizons

53 dxs 12 5/18/2025, 3:50:35 PM apod.nasa.gov ↗

Comments (12)

jauntywundrkind · 5h ago
Amazing video. But do note,

> Images from this spectacular passage have been color enhanced, vertically scaled, and digitally combined

I was quite surprised at the height of various features. Turns out yeah Pluto's not actually that wildly mountainous.

florbo · 4h ago
Just guessing here, but I think the vertical scaling might be for translating some of the top-down images they have. If you take a look at the photo below, Pluto appears to have pretty rough terrain. I didn't find anything about post-processing for this particular image, sorry in advance if I missed it.

https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19947

petters · 3h ago
Thanks, those very, very big mountains made no sense to me. The radius of Pluto is more than 1000 km
behnamoh · 4h ago
I wish the video editing was done at Hollywood because damn it they have great CGI. I want an immersive experience with these space videos, and as soon as I notice low-quality simulated mountains/etc., the whole experience goes away.
dvh · 4h ago
NASA/JPL can do amazing videos, see Cassini's Grand Finale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrGAQCq9BMU
mmooss · 3h ago
Or at a good game studio. How an immersive NASA 'game' where you walk around (or fly around) Pluto, with or without realistic gravity? In VR?
calmbell · 3h ago
I highly recommend the book Chasing New Horizons to learn more about the New Horizons mission.
BurningFrog · 3h ago
Pluto is 40x further from the sun than Earth.

That means it gets 1/1600 (0.06%) as much sunlight as us.

I know the eye can adapt a lot to low light, but I doubt Pluto would look anywhere as bright to a human traveller as the video shows.

nahkoots · 3h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude#List_of_app...

The sun on Pluto is only slightly dimmer than the sun on a very strongly overcast midday on Earth (about half as bright), but still much brighter (almost 200x) than a full moon.

BurningFrog · 3h ago
Thanks. That's better than I expected.

I'm now more optimistic for settling Jupiter's moons!

gitroom · 3h ago
man i could spend hours just watching stuff like this - pluto doesn't even feel real to me half the time. ever catch yourself wondering if we'll ever just get to walk around a world like that for real?
jmclnx · 5h ago
I am getting timeouts for the NASA Site, that never happened to me before. I guess DOGE strikes again :(