This flyby animation was compiled by Dr Stuart Robbins, a member of the New Horizons team and a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
“It’s an incredible look at system we are unlikely to revisit in our lifetimes – though we have the potential to visit other bodies farther still from the Sun with the craft as it continues to reveal new horizons in our Solar System,” Dr Robbins said.
The animation begins with Pluto flying in for its close-up on July 14, 2015.
We then pass behind Pluto and see the atmosphere glow in sunlight before the Sun passes behind Charon.
The movie ends with New Horizons’ departure, looking back on each body as thin crescents.
“I used the latest data on Pluto’s orbit, its obliquity, and the orbits of all the known moons to create the system in software. I then ‘attached’ a camera to the latest trajectory information so it would be as if you had a seat on New Horizons, watching Pluto as you zoomed past,” Dr Robbins explained.
“In my original version, each frame (1/30th of a second) represented one minute of real time, and the field of view was that of New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager.”
“Unfortunately, the result was cinematically questionable, at best, because of the very brief time that the spacecraft gets its best images and the extreme change in distance between the spacecraft and planetary system over the course of July. I needed an alternative.”
This image of the dwarf planet Pluto is as New Horizons saw it in July 2015. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
“The final result was made differently: first, the timescale had to be variable. The final product goes from one second of movie time equaling 30 hours at the beginning and end, to one second of movie time equaling 30 minutes for the closest-approach section,” he said.
“Second, the field of view could not remain as LORRI if the trajectory were to be realistic. I varied the field of view so that you can see the whole system at the beginning and end, and you can still see Pluto almost as a whole disk during the closest approach.”
“Third, the camera’s target – what’s in the center of the field of view – had to also vary.”
“Fourth, the small moons – Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra – were simply too small and faint to be seen to-scale. So I enlarged them by a factor of 5 and brightened them so you can at least see the two larger ones (Nix and Hydra), and I drew in their orbital paths.”
“Beyond that, everything about the movie is accurate,” Dr Robbins said.
