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Planetary News: New Horizons (2006)

First-Light for New Horizons Camera

5 September, 2006

As New Horizons races through the solar system at a dazzling 70,000 kilometers (43,500 miles) per hour, it continues to test its instruments and systems one by one. In June the Ralph imaging system locked on to asteroid 2002 JF56 and took sharply focused images of it as it sped by. On August 29 it was the turn of LORRI, the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager: at 2:40 a.m. EDT the covering door popped open, and five minutes later the camera took its first pictures of space. It was the last of New Horizons' seven instruments to be tested in actual space conditions.

LORRI is composed of a telescope with an 8.2 inch (20.8 centimeter) lens that focuses on a charged-coupled device (CCD). Since similar devices are used in ordinary digital cameras, LORRI can be thought of as a camera with a long telescopic lens. When New Horizons approaches Pluto in the summer of 2015, LORRI will provide the first pictures of the planet and its moons, and later on the highest resolution images. At closest range, LORRI will be able to distinguish objects as small as 50 meters across on Pluto's surface. "LORRI is our 'eagle's eyes' on New Horizons, providing the most detailed images we have, said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, the spacecraft's Principal Investigator.

LORRI's "first light" picture shows Messier 7, a star cluster in our galaxy catalogued by Charles Messier in 1764, but described more than 1600 years earlier by the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy. The image clearly shows stars all the way down to the 12th magnitude of brightness, indicating that LORRI is living up to the sensitivity levels it was designed for.

"Our hope was that LORRI's first image would prove not only that the cover had opened completely, but that LORRI was capable of providing the required high-resolution imaging of Pluto and Charon" said Andy Cheng of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, who is the instrument's principal investigator. "Our hopes were not only met, but exceeded" he added. Stern agreed: "this week's virtuoso first-light performance by LORRI is the best news any Pluto fan could hope for" he said.

LORRI first light
LORRI first light
LORRI, the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on board New Horizons, took its first image in space on August 29, 2006. The image shows Messier 7, a star cluster in the Milky Way galaxy. In 2015 LORRI will provide the highest resolution images of Pluto and its moons. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute