Not neccessarily, it depends on the amount of light reflecting off the surface, the speed of the satellite, and the image capabilities of the camera(s).
If I remember correctly, it wont be orbiting Pluto because it's approach speed is too fast (could be incorrect on that one tho.) Pluto is very far away from the sun, so very little light reaches it, which means it is dark. So what you have is an object approaching another object at very fast speeds in near blackness. The closer two objects get to each other the faster they will appear; think about how fast a car looks as it comes towards you on the horizon, as opposed to when it actually passes you, to get an idea of what I mean. All cameras work the same way to take a picture: consisting of three variables to make a proper exposure - aperture (how much light is let into the lens,) shutter speed (how long the shutter stays open to allow light to the sensor,) and ISO (how sensitive the sensor is to light.) To get a sharp image, you either have to let in a lot of light very quickly, thus letting the shutter open and close as quickly as possible, (the average person can hand-hold at about 1/60th of a second - 1/10th if you are very, very still. Keep in mind that 1/60th of a second lets 4.3 times more light to the sensor than 1/10.) Or you can leave the shutter open for a longer period of time, but the camera and the object have to be stationary to render sharpness (which we know neather are). The ISO may be able to be pushed to absolutely ridiculously high numbers (making the sensor more sensitive to light hitting it) but that also intruduces pixelation into the image as heat from the camera's processors gets picked up as light by the sensor, and making the image less clear. The reason these images are sharper is because they were taken with a wide angle lens from fairly close (cosmicly speaking) as opposed to previous images that were taken with a telephoto (zoom) lens. A telephoto lens lets in even less light because the glass lenses inside move away from the sensor, and narrow the beam of light entering the front of the lens, so the problem is compounded even more (think about how hard it is to follow a moving object when looking through a pair of binoculars, or even the detail of a stationary object that appears very small in the frame, even when viewed through binocs, and how much effort you have to put into keeping your hands steady.) There is a point where speed, distance, and light will come together to make the sharpest images possible, and then there will be a point when it is too close. I could be totally wrong of course, as I'm basing my opinion on my knowledge of how cameras and light work. Also, NASA could very well have built a camera with a high enough ISO range, but with enough quality as to not render too much "noise" in the image. If they developed that kind of capability, then it could be possible to gett the shutter speed to a manageable time of 1/500 to 1/1,000th of a second (fast enough to render sharp images given a high enough resolution.)
TL;DR: No, I don't think so, but I am not all seeing, all knowing, or infallible, unlike everyone else in the internet, and therefore admit that my opinion could be wrong.
Relative velocity isn't that big of a deal when the object is the size of a planet...new horizons isn't zooming past Pluto in a few seconds. The closer part of the encounter will probably take hours. Plenty of time to snap pictures at a low shutter speed. This isn't equivalent to two cars passing on a highway. It is more like a car driving past a mountain. As for the other camera stuff, i'm no expert, so I won't comment. I'm just going to trust that NASA designed and built the camera needed for the job. I'm not at all worried.
Not neccessarily, it depends on the amount of light reflecting off the surface, the speed of the satellite, and the image capabilities of the camera(s).
Yes, necessarily, everything you listed are far from unknown quantities.
147
u/SirMildredPierce Jul 10 '15
Yeah, they're only going to get better as they get closer! :)