Artist Accurately Predicted How Pluto Would Look in 1979

[Ichingcarpenter]

Before the Pluto fly-by conspiracies begin though, Dixon has pointed out that his image was based on some fairly safe guesses:

I'd like to claim prophetic powers, but the painting was guided by the reasonable assumption that Pluto likely has a periodically active atmosphere that distributes powdery exotic frosts into lowland areas. The reddish color of the higher features is caused by tholins – hydrocarbons common in the outer solar system. The partial circular arcs would be caused by flooding of craters by slushy exotic ices. Pluto is apparently more orange than I painted it, however; I assumed the exotic ices would push colors more into the whites and grays.

http://www.dailygrail.com/Alien-Nation/2015/7/Artist-Accurately-Predicted-How-Pluto-Would-Look-1979

[PATRICK]

1. The media

and their "oh wow who would have thunk it!" perpetual state of awe(the dead end of a supposed education process) at what actually is old critical research they can't imagine doing themselves and/or the dumbed down end product to entertain the masses. Even scientists hopelessly training themselves to penetrate the media filter have to hope something gets through a murk darker than deepest space.

[jakeXT]

2. + The Hubble mapping

10:00ish EDT: I caught up with Marc Buie, who headed the pre-New Horizons Pluto mapping efforts. He is pleased and surprised by how well the images match. Those efforts included two phases of Hubble mapping, and one set of maps computed from a bunch of "mutual event" observations, when Pluto and Charon eclipsed each other. He said the maps generated from the mutual event observations have a host of problems, so he is itching to get the New Horizons maps to subtract the major features out of his mutual event maps and look for evidence for temporal change.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/07140911-new-horizons-best-look-at.html

[AlbertCat]

3. He's "one of them"!!!!!!!!!

Has anyone seen Don Dixon's birth certificate?

[cstanleytech]

4. Wow, it has craters, how could anyone have guessed that?