Are pictures from New Horizons Spacecraft real?

Question

Why are the pictures from New Horizons all really just rendering. Why couldn't they just post real pictures taken from the spacecraft. Better yet, why couldn't it be a camera mounted outside and accessed via the internet so we can see what the spacecraft "sees" on-line?

Answer 1

New Horizons did take real images when it made it's close encounter with Jupiter. You can browse them on-line in mission's home page: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/index.php

Currently New Horizons is on it's 8 year cruise to encounter Pluto. Most of the probe's instruments are in sleep mode. Annually it's instruments are waken up and tested and calibrated. When the probe gets closer to Pluto it will start it's scientific work again and then it's cameras will take and send unpreceded images of Pluto.

We'll just have to be patient and wait for few years.

Answer 2

Yes, they are real.
No, they are not renderings.
They do "just post real pictures."

There is processing done to the photos, especially in regard to color, but to think they are in any way "fake" is a gross misunderstanding of the process. Our space probes purposely take black and white photos through various color filters...this can give us detailed compositional information...far beyond the "pretty picture" you get with a normal color image. (Sure, you would get real full color, but you lose all the various filter data...which, scientifically, is far more important.) Ironically, the various filtered images can be recombined to create color images that approximate real colors...or to enhance/change colors so as to bring out different features.

As for seeing what the spacecraft sees "online," is it such a bother to have to wait a few hours to see the raw images posted on the New Horizons website? Back in the day, us old fogeys often had to wait weeks or months to see pictures of Saturn from the Voyager probes.

The reason you don't see pictures from New Horizons now is because it isn't taking any. There is nothing to take pictures of. It won' be doing much of anything until it reaches Pluto.

Answer 3

Yes, the pictures are real, taken with a camera mounted to the outside of the spacecraft.
They have been ever- so- slightly color enhanced to bring out more detail.
The spacecraft does not, however, have a real- time feed to the internet. The data must be processed first, before the pictures are released.

Answer 4

I have seen real pictures from it. See the source.
And there is a camera mounted outside the space craft. That is what is taking all the pictures. But the camera looks out into space from the space craft; it doesn't show parts of the space craft.