Kenneth Chang

Here are some facts to ponder: New Horizons and Dawn performed their second optical navigation campaigns in the same week. (1/3)

New Horizons' camera has 19x stronger magnification than Dawn's. (2/3)

But New Horizons will not get pictures of Pluto as good as the pics Dawn just returned of Ceres until just 2 weeks before its flyby. (3/3)

@elakdawalla It's not camera magnification that's most striking- NH is 1.33 AU from Pluto, Dawn`s much closer to Ceres than Moon is to Earth

@cephalopernicus True! I find that most people don't really get the difference between 300 thousand and 300 million km, they're both "big".

@elakdawalla I never start the conversation in km, not in the US! I think Earth-Sun distance and Earth-Moon distance frame it well.

Cool -- @cephalopernicus just pointed out to me that Dawn is near Earth-Moon distance from Ceres, while NH near Earth-Sun dist from Pluto.

@elakdawalla Also, if we swapped spacecraft (and their speeds) right now, New Horizons would reach Ceres in less than four hours.