Re: Planet X: MAY Coordinates [OT]

OK, so Pluto can be seen, as something other than a pin-point, as it is
MAGNIFIED by observatories. And it appears as a "blob" (i.e. DIFFUSE,
not a pin-point) to some.  Thanks guys.  Planet X, being larger but
farther out, likewise needs to be magnified at an observatory, and to
those who sighted it, the "blob" description applied, as I recall.

In Article <[email protected]> Martin Brown wrote:
> That was how it was originally detected in the late 70's,
> but the HST can actually image Pluto's disk directly. Not
> so many pixels across it, but definitely resolved as a disk.
> See eg.
>     http://www.seds.org/hst/PlutoCharon.html

In Article <[email protected]> Brian Tung wrote:
> The occultation work was done, if I recall correctly,
> by none other than Dave Tholen and Marc Buie, among
> others.  The best *ground*-based images have done
> little more than to show a bigger blob for Pluto than the
> one for Charon, and even then it's unclear to my
> untrained eyes whether that is really because Pluto is
> larger, or only because it's also brighter.
>
> However, the Hubble Space Telescope, which is based
> in space, *has* shown a disc for Pluto at least, and I
> think also for Charon.

In Article <[email protected]> David Tholen wrote:
> That effort predates the direct imaging by HST.  Also,
> due to the tidal lock, the mutual events were able to
> map only a single hemisphere of Pluto, whereas the
> HST images are global, save for a small patch around
> the south pole. ... HST's Faint Object Camera got
> something like 7 pixels across the disk of Pluto.