Does anyone know if there are, or will be, any larger images available? I’d love to use one for my desktop background (and have it fill the screen without needing to be upscaled), but none of the images i can find, stunning as they are, are larger than 2MP
AAUI, New Horizons’ transfer rate is like 1kbps. So yeah, there probably are some huge tiffs, but you might have to wait until June, or later, to get ahold of one.
As eschereal says, the probe has got 50 gigabits of data and imagery on-board; most of it HD, and all of it non-compressed.
What they stated in their last press conference on Friday, is that they plan on downloading all the data/imagery they can in a lossy format (like jpeg or something) over the next couple months, just to get an overall glance at everything it collected, then they begin the much slower process of downloading all the RAW, non-lossy data over the next year+.
So, it depends. We might get full resolution over the next several weeks*, but it could be pretty compressed and full of lossy artifacts. Or it could be of reduced resolution and a lossy format. The real good stuff will start showing up probably around/after September.
New imagery and data will be released on a weekly basis from now on. Fridays, I think.
*Just my WAG.
Plans on image release seem to be changing a bit. The research team is hanging on to the images for a few days so they can do some quick analyses and caption them properly before releasing them. Looks like we’ll get a set of full-resolution, uncompressed “first look” images on Friday. However, after that the probe will only be transmitting non-image data for the next couple months. The full-resolution uncompressed images will only start arriving in September.
Ahh, thanks lazybratsche.
And submitted for your perusal, a couple of threads from November 2000 about the then-proposed Pluto mission “Pluto-Kuiper Express,” which had recently been canceled.
Nix, Hydra, anyone?
The discoverer of Charon preferred the pronunciation as “Sha-ron,”. Go to around 24:20.
Drops the mic.
Also, in order to perform all aspects of the required mission, New Horizons had to pass through a target window no more than a few hundred miles wide. I heard this morning that one of the obstacles to achieving this kind of accuracy is that we just didn’t have sufficiently accurate information about exactly where the hell Pluto was. Part of the project involved observations at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) array on Cerro Paranal in Chile to much more accurately pin down Pluto’s orbit. Not sure if the mission would even have been viable without this new information.
How frustrating. We can thread the eye of a needle at 5 billion miles… but we’re essentially stuck watching images load one line of pixels at a time, like a dial-up BBS from the 80’s.
(I mean, I understand why it works this way. It would just be so much more convenient if this was a sci-fi show where we have unlimited bandwidth and no lag for light speed.)
“Sharon!!!”
M’m’m’my Charon, ah
Sweet. Like the quick flash of Charon in the back.
Cool ty
I wondered why the dark side of Pluto had stars in it till I realized it was dust on the screen. 
My god. It’s full of dust.
Open the dust bin doors, HAL
New Horizons team selects next KBO target:
*NASA has selected the potential next destination for the New Horizons mission … a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) known as 2014 MU69 that orbits nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto.
John Grunsfeld, astronaut and chief of the NASA Science Mission Directorate: “While discussions whether to approve this extended mission will take place in the larger context of the planetary science portfolio, we expect it to be much less expensive than the prime mission while still providing new and exciting science.” … New Horizons will perform a series of four maneuvers in late October and early November to set its course toward 2014 MU69 – nicknamed “PT1” (for “Potential Target 1”) – which it [COLOR=“Black”]expects to reach on January 1, 2019.… “2014 MU69 is a great choice because it is just the kind of ancient KBO, formed where it orbits now, that the Decadal Survey desired us to fly by,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern …
New Horizons was originally designed to fly beyond the Pluto system and explore additional Kuiper Belt objects. The spacecraft carries extra hydrazine fuel for a KBO flyby; its communications system is designed to work from far beyond Pluto; its power system is designed to operate for many more years; and its scientific instruments were designed to operate in light levels much lower than it will experience during the 2014 MU69 flyby.*[/color]
Cool. It makes sense to continue to use existing assets in this manner. It cost a lot to get it where it is so it should be utilized for as long as possible. They’re still gathering info from the Voyager probes launched in the 70s.
New Horizons is starting to send back high resolution, uncompressed images! It’s been transmitting them for about five days now. Already, there’s a lot of new jaw-dropping mosaics and detail images.