Is good photo equipment even important? The pictures of Pluto prove that it it ;)

I admit that I’m just kidding with the title of this entry since I don’t want to start the old discussion of “who is responsible for the quality of the pictures, the equipment or the photographer?”. However, it’s impossible to claim that the equipment is unimportant because the photos taken of Pluto over the last years show rather impressively just how positive the influence of better technology on the quality of the photos actually is. On the other hand, the newest, sharpest images were taken “up close” with the space probe New Horizons, which just goes to show how important it is to be at the right place at the right time. 😉

The first three pictures were taken with the Hubble space telescope.

16. May 1994

7. March 1996

20. July 2011

This year in April – nine years after having been launched – the space probe started taking the first pictures and transmitting them back home. Since then, the photos have become ever sharper and more detailed, as can be seen below. The last image was taken from a distance of “just” 769,102 km. It shows a young mountain range with peaks higher than 3000m.