r/interestingasfuck 17h ago

Views of pluto through the years r/all

Post image
33.7k Upvotes

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u/halcyann 15h ago

"2018" is just a false color image from the same New Horizons mission

u/KillTheBronies 11h ago

And "1996" is just a composite of the 1994 hubble images.

u/lolofaf 10h ago

The '96 one looks like someone rendered a sphere in a game engine lol

u/Ze_AwEsOmE_Hobo 10h ago

For 1996, those are some PS2 ass graphics.

u/danglytomatoes 6h ago

I thought it was from Starfox 64 and I was trying to get the joke

u/talkingwires 6h ago

Shift + A — Mesh/Cube
Ctrl + 3
F12

u/Daniil_Dankovskiy 6h ago

Not really, it's a result of theorizing about which parts of the surface are brighter or darker. I don't think that's a proper image or a co posited of images, it's a rendered model

u/KillTheBronies 4h ago

It is a rendered model but the surface texture is from real images.

https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00826

This map was assembled by computer image processing software from four separate images of Pluto's disk taken with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Faint Object Camera (FOC) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble imaged nearly the entire surface, as Pluto rotated on its axis in late June and early July 1994.

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u/frownGuy12 13h ago

False color is a misnomer. It’s light outside the visible spectrum remapped to RGB. RGB itself is false color that happens to align with the light sensitive cells in our eyes. Save for pure red, green, or blue images, all color images don’t actually match reality. An alien looking at an iPhone would see non sensical colors. 

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u/JaggedMetalOs 12h ago

False color is a misnomer.

No that's not correct, "false-color" is a widely recognized term for mapping non-visible light colors onto RGB, as opposed to "true-color" which maps visible colors to RGB in a way that closely approximates how our eyes would see the thing being captured.

u/randylush 10h ago

Yeah that’s right. I don’t understand why people get on here and contradict everything while also being confidently incorrect

u/goatonastik 5h ago

It's the most reddit thing I've seen. People so eager to correct others they're not concerned about knowing if they're right or not.

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u/Time-Ladder-6111 7h ago

They want to think Pluto is bright red and blue.

u/Yeet_Master420 11h ago

What we would see is probably closer to the bottom left image if anything

u/Illustrious_Donkey61 11h ago

Yeah I thought false colourings planets was just to help see features better

u/StillJustaRat 8h ago

It’s also useful for showing information about the materials present. Like photos of nebula can be configured to show hydrogen densities as red colors etc.

u/Gravecat 10h ago

aw man :(

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u/Global_Permission749 10h ago

Also, there are color-coded images which don't even map one color to another - they might map elevation, temperature, mineral content, or some other non EM data point to something color-coded, and unless you know what's being mapped, you might just assume it's a false-color image.

And then there's just bitch-ass people who take an image and crank the saturation to 1000 and post it online.

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u/piningtreefrog 12h ago

If we were to look at pluto with a naked eye, it wouldn't look like that. False color is a pretty good word for that.

u/gofishx 8h ago edited 8h ago

You aren't ever going to get a satisfying image of what it would look like to the naked eye, because cameras dont process an image the same way your brain does. Most cameras make images that look really close to what we see, but there is always a difference. Remember how people were looking at the aurora by taking pictures of the sky on their cell phone? You ever notice how photos dont do certain light spectacles justice, or how a photo can oversell something that doesn't look nearly as cool in reality? There are reasons for this. Unfortunately, pluto is just to far away to see with anything other than fancy equipment looking at it with wavelengths beyond our ability to perceive.

I think of it more as being saturated to a degree that allows subtle color differences to stand out more than they would if you were actually in a spacecraft orbiting pluto. To the naked eye, it would certainly look more brown, but these little regions would still have all the same little boundaries and differences in color, it would just be a bit more subdued and subtle. You'd still notice a change as you moved from one color to another. It'd just be a little less vibrant and more earth-toned...or pluto-toned...plutoned? Like something between the last 2 images.

u/tessartyp 6h ago

Except it's not "just a bit more saturated". It's mapping near- and mid-IR emission to the visible range. Completely different (non)colours.

u/Hungry-Recover2904 10h ago

ok, so false colours

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u/Athejia 12h ago

"erm actually 🤓" type comment, neil degrasse tyson type comment, you know exactly what he meant its false color bc it isnt how we would see the planet, its added on artificially

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u/ihavecameraquestions 12h ago

Very pedantic Reddit comment right here

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u/timberwolf0122 13h ago

Darmock and jalad, at the Apple Store

u/Haruka_Kazuta 10h ago

I thought the false colors are there to map out the terrain/element of these places?

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u/pmmeuranimetiddies 8h ago

> An alien looking at an iPhone would see non sensical colors. 

They definitely would not look at an RGB image and see colors that exist outside the visible light spectrum though. True color means it (somewhat) accurately represents the colors within its spectrum. It's not that RGB aligns perfectly with human color receptors either - there is a degree of variability in human color receptor activation frequency ranges as well. For example, colorblindness is caused by too much overlap between the activation frequencies of two color receptors and can sometimes be corrected by introducing a filter which blocks the overlapping frequencies.

Ok, what if the alien has more color receptors than we do? Women who have one colorblind allele have four distinct color receptors and significantly better color perception, and there is a study which estimates 15% of women to have this trait. RGB may not capture as much detail as reality for such individuals, but the point is it still looks close enough they can correlate colors on a screen to real life.

Finally, the visible light spectrum is not a coincidence. We basically see the spectrum of light that the sun emits the most of and also has high transmissivity through most gasses and through water. Basically, most aliens would still look at an image on an RGB screen and still see it as if they were looking at it through glass, water, or something like that.

They would not see colors represented as something being significantly far off from their place in the electromagnetic spectrum.

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u/Own-Detective-A 12h ago

What is real anyway?

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u/Illustrious_Donkey61 11h ago

I thought Pluto had just become gay

/s

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u/anttilles 16h ago

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u/Yardsale420 15h ago

“Your mom thought I was big enough.” -Pluto

u/reeferbradness 10h ago

👏👏👏

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u/awwwphooey 13h ago

chortle!

u/Stupor_Nintento 9h ago

My mum left before I was born. :(

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u/OkHarrisonBidet 16h ago

His new cosmos was boring af

u/AgentWowza 9h ago

Really? I thought it was pretty cool. It's how I learned about tardigrades.

The opening sequence is super pretty too.

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u/eat-pussy69 16h ago

Cosmos Possible Worlds?

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u/OkHarrisonBidet 15h ago

2014 one. I was so excited for it and told my family it’s a must-watch and to watch it together with me. The scene a boy touching a girl’s face was cringe and awkward af. The animation of a guy fearing lead pollution was childish and boring and too long af. I can’t forget my family’s eyes questioning me “is this that good?”

u/GeneReddit123 11h ago

While personally I agree with you, I wouldn't put the blame for that on NDT himself, but rather on the modern media expectations in the age of TikTok and YT shorts. You're expected to draw attention with quick snippets and hyperbole. It's Carl Sagan which the new generation would say is "boring af", because they can't focus on his thought process long enough to make sense.

The OG Gilded Age came with yellow journalism, which, in its heyday, grabbed all the attention away from more "reputable" and thoughtful publications. The current Gilded Age 2.0 is no different. We're in a digital yellow journalism age, a time in which Carl Sagan has no place. We can only hope that one day we will be past it, just like we passed the original one.

u/CardOfTheRings 10h ago

Tik toc and YouTube shorts didn’t exist when the show was made. What are you even on about

u/Stopikingonme 10h ago

Nah, he’s right, it was boring as fuck.

(I rewatch the original on DVD every once in a while and still find little snippets that draw me in. NDT’s was paint by numbers tv with his monotone “I’m soo much smarter than everyone” voice.)

His hard on against religions turned me off as well. The OG with Sagan’s kind voice was a big part of what allowed me to question my anti-science upbringing and make the change. Sagan addressed the same things but with tact, and gentle understanding.

I’m sure you’re right about the tik tok gen finding it boring for their own reasons as well but his version was a huge bummer for a lot of us Saganites.

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u/Spank_Engine 15h ago

That's too bad! I'm reading Cosmos right now and wanted to watch that one after thinking that it will be an updated version of Carl Sagan's documentary.

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u/BOBmackey 12h ago

The first two NDT Cosmos were really good, the third one was not great

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u/NickyDeeM 12h ago

Pluto is right!

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u/Gumbercules81 15h ago

Photo #4 is not accurate. It's quite as drab as you'd imagine something at the edge of our solar system

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u/KnotiaPickle 13h ago

Why did they add those wild colors?

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u/Wide_Combination_773 13h ago

It's a representation of the spectroscopic readings representing concentrations of different elements in the soil/ice.

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u/owa00 13h ago

It's probably various chemical spectroscopic measurements overlaid on a topographic map.

u/randylush 10h ago

“Overlaid on a topographical map” implies this is color on top of a rendering of the planet based on some 3d data of the planet’s topography. Which sounds insanely complicated and speculation that’s just unlikely to be true. It’s much more likely that this is simply a set of photographs.

u/Maxx2245 5h ago

Not at all. When New Horizons was taking pictures, it was taking images within and outside of the visible spectrum. "2018" is a false-colour image that superimposes IR/UV onto the visible spectrum and that is the resultant image

u/randylush 5m ago

Exactly. It’s a set of photographs. It’s a photograph on the IR, UV and visible spectrums. None of those are topographical maps.

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u/Gumbercules81 13h ago

Generate more buzz/views

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u/anti_pope 13h ago

That is the reason these things are posted as if they're real. It is not however the reason it was done. Each color is a different material.

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u/Booty_Bumping 12h ago edited 11h ago

False color images are not just to make it look cool. It has a research purpose — it's easier to identify chemical compounds when certain wavelengths are highlighted. In fact, most space cameras can't produce anything but false color images, because they are not photographing in RGB (although a few spacecraft do have an RGB camera, such as Perseverance, but it's not the most useful camera it has). The ones that have wild looking colors are actually less processed than the ones that are intended to look accurate to the human eye, because they are just assigning existing sensor channels to colors and not doing any color inference based on incomplete data. In a sense it's actually the true color images that are made for hype, because they only rarely show up in research papers. When they do show up, the purpose is usually to vaguely refer to a specific dataset / previous research papers rather than a specific image.

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u/timberwolf0122 13h ago

It’s a false color applied, probably because they imaged using frequencies we can’t see like uv/ir or radar

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u/garrafadeacido 16h ago

I have questions for 1996 lol

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u/Mash_Effect 12h ago

Same technology as Windows 95 screensavers.

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u/jelilikins 13h ago

It was into that whole disco vibe back then 

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u/Fantastic-Wallaby267 12h ago

I'm 95% sure it's a golf ball spray painted silver and taken with a slightly blurred camera.

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u/PaleontologistOk2516 10h ago

They’re like it probably looks like this but who knows haha.

u/greens_function 10h ago

“Yeah so uhhh.. it’s gotta be a sphere, right?”

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u/max_adam 12h ago

It was censored for indecency

u/davidmccandless 1h ago

New Planet, Same Old Pluto

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u/Infinite-Condition41 16h ago edited 12h ago

And yet, it wasn't discovered with telescopes, it was discovered with math.

Take that flat earthers.

Edit: Upon further research, this isn't strictly true. Mathematics suggested locations for the possible location of a ninth planet but it was telescopes and photography and comparing pictures looking for moving objects which eventually nailed down it's existence. Unlike Uranus, Pluto doesn't have the mass to noticeably affect the orbits of the other, much larger, planets.

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u/KnightOfWords 15h ago

You're probably thinking of Neptune, which was discovered due to discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus, suggesting another unseen planet was affecting it.

The search for Planet X was inspired by the same technique, due to supposed deviations in Neptune's orbit. Pluto was discovered but it isn't nearly massive enough to significantly affect Neptune's orbit. When Voyager 2 visited Uranus and Neptune estimates of their mass were refined, the supposed deviations turned out to be an error.

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u/eb6069 13h ago

So, is it not possible to view Neptune through a standard earth bound telescope?

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u/scalyblue 13h ago

Neptune has an apparent magnitude of just under 8, impossible to see with the naked eye, with an 8 inch telescope you might see a tiny blue dot, but Neptune is barely over 2 arc seconds wide so emphasis on tiny, it’s basically something you’d never find unless you know where you expect it to be

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u/eb6069 13h ago

Thank you.

I always assumed we could find anything in our solar system by conventional means, that is very interesting.

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u/United_Spread_3918 12h ago

Then you might find reading about the planet 9 stuff. Growing belief that the math supports yet another planet in our solar system that we haven’t detected yet. Far out there, but it’s interesting that even today we still have that uncertainty even about the stuff relatively closest to us

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u/eb6069 12h ago

Is that the "Planet X" theory? If so, I've delved into it a couple of times on YouTube to have a layman's idea on this mystery planet in the heliosphere and generally find it as a discovery that's worth celebrating over haha

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u/Jbell_1812 15h ago

How was an entire planet discovered witn math? I'm not trying to be mean I'm genuinely curious

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u/HillbillyTechno 15h ago

Something along the lines of, they detected it’s presence because of the gravitational effect it had on other planets orbit, they used math to determine there had to be another large mass and roughly where it should be.

Edit: I’m a Joe shmo so someone who knows more about it feel free to pop in and correct me

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u/biblionoob 15h ago

Hi il someone who kind of know, we do that in H.S physics class. Its not that complicated you can do that with vector. Like determining the mass of the sun by studying earth orbit kind of stuff. Its widely impressive to me how smart they were to determine those equation and find the math behind it.

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u/revelent018 14h ago

Neptune was discovered this way actually. Uranus's orbit was acting funky, and some people calculated the mass and position of an object required to cause the perturbation seen in Uranus's orbit. Some years later, someone pointed a telescope at that spot and lo and behold, there is Neptune.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune

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u/ZHISHER 14h ago

Long story short, they knew used math to figure out exactly how Uranus should move (it’s mass, distance from the Earth, etc.)

When they saw it not moving like that, they realized there must be another planet close by affecting it’s gravity

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u/rhabarberabar 14h ago edited 54m ago

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/[deleted] 15h ago

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u/Infinite-Condition41 15h ago

That literally doesn't mean anything, because there is no such thing as a consistent flat earther, much less a group of them. 

u/phoenix-born49erfan 11h ago

I've been to flagstaff az and seen the actual telescope used to discover Pluto. Pretty cool spot

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u/TulioGonzaga 16h ago

Why did they use a Japanese telescope in 1994?

u/tekko001 10h ago

They had to, you could see Uranus in the back

u/rodzieman 9h ago

This cracked me up!

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u/Archon-Toten 16h ago

If space quest taught me anything, it's space is pixelated.

u/CallMeDrWorm42 10h ago

I know you're joking, but space is un-ironically pixelated. Sorta. If we think of a pixel in a game like space quest as being the smallest length of a thing that can be represented, we have the Planck length in real life. It is the smallest unit of length theoretically possible. Nothing can be shorter than the Planck length. You could think of it as being the "resolution" of reality.

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u/Denis-96 15h ago

1996? Lmao i can see the polygons

u/OrigReckit 3h ago

1996 is literally a 2D rendered sphere.

u/mattoelite 11h ago

I read that it hasn’t even completed a rotation around the sun since it was discovered? Incredible

u/Seanbodia 8h ago

Republicans: "shit, even Pluto's woke."

u/chickentendie007 8h ago

NO WAY IS THAT GELBA GLEBA I DONT KNOW

u/Shujinco2 8h ago

I miss Disco Ball Pluto. Back when the Solar System had class!

u/Ok_Refrigerator_2545 6h ago

Pluto wants to be a planet again so bad

u/seenit_reddit_dunnit 6h ago

Pluto be like: 🫶

u/Free-Ad9535 5h ago

I love him.

u/AshelyWeinerdogowner 4h ago

a rainbow and a heart. pluto is LGBTQ and the world rejoices!

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u/you-farted 2h ago

You’re still a planet to me bro.

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u/Thom5001 16h ago

Yet we still don’t have a clear image of a UFO 🙄

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u/MrUniverse1990 16h ago

Getting a clear image of a UFO is, by definition, impossible. UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object, and if you have a clear image of something, you can identify it.

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u/ThrowFar_Far_Away 15h ago

Well no, if it actually is from outer space then you would still not be able to identify it. Since we would have no idea what it is.

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u/ExplanationCrazy5463 14h ago edited 13h ago

They don't want us to and they have the technology to prevent it.

u/RatedRSuperstar81 11h ago

Do we have similar views of Uranus?

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u/Colonelfudgenustard 10h ago

It seems that they take more artistic license with each passing year.

u/UnrealNL 8h ago

He has grown so much, good boy.

u/oldschoolrock95 5h ago

Planet Pluto😤

u/_Adrahmelech_ 11h ago

She's trying so hard to look like a planet.

u/youaremycandygirl 11h ago

Now do UFOs.

u/stiffneck84 10h ago

Now do Uranus!!!

u/HistoricalDrawing29 10h ago

better cameras

u/TrailerParkFrench 10h ago

Pluto changed a lot.

u/TralfamadorianZoo 10h ago

2025 Will be the technicolor Pluto for sure.

u/2mock2turtle 10h ago

I’m happy Pluto felt it could come out in 2018.

u/ProfBatman 10h ago

It's like Pluto were a gumball that gets more appetizing over time.

u/BillyBean11111 10h ago

2018 artists rendition of pluto

u/splitinfinitive22222 10h ago

It was a real headtrip when I learned that space/heavenly bodies probably don't look like that to the naked eye, and that all our satellite images are visually interpreted from streams of data.

I think, like most people, I believed that the data being sent back was literal image files.

u/turkeymayosandwich 10h ago

Light my sight but backwards.

u/Probodobo 9h ago

1994 & 1996 images were captured by Japan

u/wakopunk 9h ago

I HAVE YET TO SEE A PSYCH REFERENCE HERE.

Do better Reddit.

u/NotPromKing 9h ago

This makes me think of those pictures of zygotes. First it’s just a fertilized egg, then it’s four cells, then 16 cells, and soon it looks like an actual fetus.

Replaced cells with pixels and the analogy is close enough, right?

u/Johny_Covelli 9h ago

What was wrong about 1994?

u/WolFlow2021 9h ago

Yeah, no matter how much rouge and blue eye shadow you apply to this guy it's still not a planet. So beat it, bozos.

u/Bac0nJuice 9h ago

Why do the pixels on the 1996 one wrap around the curvature of the surface? And not in a perfect grid like other camera sensors?

And also why is the edge perfectly sharp when you can clearly see the pixel resolution???

u/Hobbsendkid 9h ago

So basically Pluto is going straight up Captain Spaulding on us

u/kissmyirish 9h ago

I ate a chocolate that looks like Pluto recently.

u/OgdruJahad 8h ago

Someone in 1996 :"Hey what if I subdivide the surface to make it smooth?"

Computer:"Computer says no. "

u/fartsoccermd 8h ago

1996 is straight up just an ms word art clip.

u/Taptrick 8h ago

4th image is screaming “I know nothing about astronomy and did not bother educating myself before posting this”.

u/guyFromFuturePast 8h ago

I knew da vinci was kicking.

u/WeCantBothBeMe 8h ago

2018 looks like a jawbreaker

u/ericraymondlim 8h ago

Whoa I had no idea Pluto looked like a party.

u/Collistoralo 8h ago

I like how the 1996 just looks like a low poly silver ball

u/Outrageous_Scale2989 7h ago

ah pluto, kinda miss the little guy

u/Slav_Shaman 7h ago

I miss disco ball Pluto. That was quite a space party back then

u/zenmaster24 7h ago

Pluto flies the red white and blue?

u/Simply-Jolly_Fella 6h ago

1996 Pluto was Discoing hard

u/Shattered_Disk4 6h ago

When I was a kid I legit thought Pluto was just a big metal ball

u/hooperdaniels 6h ago

GARsh!

u/HeX-6 5h ago

Talk about a glow up

u/Co2Lamester 5h ago

The first one is the ultrasound. It will turn 31 next year 😊

u/Commercial-Whole2513 5h ago

She's a beauty

u/Own_Initiative396 5h ago

1996 Pluto was the best Pluto

u/tsuzmir 4h ago

It aged well

u/Peanut0099 4h ago

What’s with the red area?

u/cougieuk 4h ago

In 1996 did someone swap Pluto for a fitball from the local Pilates class ?

u/Misschocolat73 4h ago

High Card Level 4

u/joost00719 3h ago

Pi went from 4 to 3.14

u/ThanksTasty9258 3h ago

What was the point of 1996 even?

u/KazJunShipper 3h ago

A disco ball?

u/SnipeGhost 3h ago

seems Pluto went through a disco phase.

u/frunxas 2h ago

just an iPhone? wow.

u/dieselboy93 1h ago

someone went to pluto and vandalized it with colors in 2018, we need to go back there and remove that

u/Lanky_Information825 1h ago

This confirms it, astronomy in the 90s really sucked lol

u/bortello 34m ago

😂😂😂😂😂