Proxima Centauri
by JackDesBwa 2020-06-21 09:52
These images of Proxima Centauri were taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on the New Horizons spacecraft, and by a remotely operated 0.4-meter telescope at the Siding Spring node of the Las Cumbres Observatory in Australia on Earth, on April 22, 2020.
Anyone with appropriate software can use the images: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Learn/Parallax/Parallax-Images.php They are in FITS format, the RAW of astronomers. Every development is unique so I ended with a slightly different image than the one officially released. I also added some context on the left with a stereoscopic representation of the probe made from a 3D model of it.
The spacescraft is about 7 terameters away from Earth. Despite this enormous stereo base (100,000,000,000,000 times the separation of our eyes), all stars except Proxima Centauri (which is the closest star [4,2 light-years] after the sun) are at infinity, which gives a sense of the insanely huge size of the universe and of the amount of emptiness around us.
Credit to :
- Las Cumbres Observatory, Siding Spring node for Earth view
- NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute for New Horizons view.
- NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/David Napolillo for New Horizons 3D model
- NASA for the image of the Earth