Why are there no decent pictures of the planet Pluto?

Question

Why do we have so many beautiful pictures of nebulas, galaxies, and stars billions of light years away but no decent pictures of Pluto?

Answer 1

Pluto is so far from the sun that it reflects so little light that it is hard to picture. Also, it is so far away from us and relatively small compared to the gas giants that it doesn't make for a good picture. Finally, none of the probes we have sent out (e.g. Galileo, Cassini, Voyageur) have passed by it to be photographed from satellite as Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus have, for example.

Answer 2

Quite simply because Pluto is so far away from the sun and hence not much light from the sun reaches Pluto for it to reflect and be seen. Also Pluto is very small and does not have its own light source. There hasn't been any space probe that has visited Pluto but now NASA's new horizons probe is on it's way to Pluto and it will reach Pluto in 2015, then we will have awesome pics of not only Pluto but it's three moons Charon, nix and hydra and some other objects beyond Pluto at the fringe of our solar system known as the Kuiper Belt.
As for galaxies and nebula although they are distant, they are very big and emit light e.g The Orion Nebula has a diameter of 24 light years. That's why they can be imaged easily.
The telescopes do not magnify anything they just gather more light from an object, that makes these nebulas and galaxy easy to photograph.

Answer 3

It's all a question of size. Pluto is a tiny lump of rock and ice billions of miles away. Distant galaxies are huge, thousands of light years across. A bit of simple trigonometry shows that even the most distant galaxy appears to cover a greater area of sky than Pluto does. Some nebulae even cover a greater area of sky than the full Moon, but we can't see them without telescopes because they are so faint.

A good comparison is the difference between being able to see the CN tower from a couple of miles along the shore of lake Ontario, but not the ant crawling on a rock a few yeards away.

Answer 4

Pluto is so far from the sun that it reflects very little light. Also its diameter is extremely small and hard to resolve because of distance. Most telescopes gather light from celestial objects; the more light they can gather the better will be the resulting image. Even the Hubble Space Telescope can't do a very good job of gathering enough of Pluto's feeble light to give us a good image. Objects like stars, nebulae and galaxies thousands of light years beyond Pluto, however, do radiate relatively large amounts of light and have very large diameters. With long exposures telescopes can give us some spectacular views.

Answer 5

We have pictures of galaxies, which are unimaginably huge, billions of light years away that are faint and blurry, and which require an exposure of 100 hours with a camera of incredible resolution, which is made for just that purpose.

Nebulas that have been photographed are almost all in our galaxy, are light years across, and are relatively near.

Stars don't show more than a point of light through any telescope.

Pluto is tiny, and only reflects part of the small amount of sunlight that it receives.

Answer 6

Pluto is very very small (smaller than our moon). So it is a very tiny object in space.

Nebulas and galaxies are HUGE in comparison. Even the best images from Hubble of distant objects still only shows detail down to maybe a light year across.

And look at the images of any of the stars - they are still just points of light and stars are a lot larger than Pluto. The only stars that have an appreciable size to the image are supergiants (and even they are relatively small in the image).

Answer 7

because it's so freakin' far away from the sun. galaxies, nebulas and other stars can all light up themselves. but we only have 1 sun to share. you never noticed how pictures of planets are sometimes half black? it's a wonder pluto can even get any of the spotlight. but it is covered in ice.

Answer 8

There's a robotic mission to Pluto, New Horizons, that will take excellent pictures when it gets there in 2015. It's on the way.

Answer 9

pluto is too far away. there is not much light reflecting off it maybe

nebulae, stars, galaxies all emit their own light

Answer 10

obviously the great distance has something to do with it..... but funny enough Pluto is not a planet but actually a moon.... it orbits another formation in that area.... (aparently)