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[Log4Girlz]

No, it would look black because its atmosphere is so thin. Youd see a haze more during the sunrise/sunset.

And then quickly freeze to death

 

[cameron]

Press Release: "New Horizons Publishes First Research Paper in 'Science,' Describing Numerous Pluto System Findings"

From Pluto’s unusual heart-shaped region to its extended atmosphere and intriguing moons, New Horizons has revealed a degree of diversity and complexity in the Pluto system that few expected in the frigid outer reaches of the solar system.

The New Horizons team describes a wide range of findings about the Pluto system in its first science paper, released today. “The Pluto System: Initial Results from its Exploration by New Horizons,” led by mission Principal Investigator Alan Stern, appears as the cover story in the Oct. 16 issue of Science, just three months after NASA’s historic first exploration of the Pluto system in July.

“The New Horizons mission completes our initial reconnaissance of the solar system, giving humanity our first look at this fascinating world and its system of moons,” said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “New Horizons is not only writing the textbook on the Pluto system, it’s serving to inspire current and future generations to keep exploring—to keep searching for what’s beyond the next hill.”

This high-resolution image captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). The bright expanse is the western lobe of the “heart,” informally called Sputnik Planum, which has been found to be rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane ices.

Science paper (available to everyone): "The Pluto system: Initial results from its exploration by New Horizons"
Nature news story of findings: "Pluto’s geology is unlike any other"

From last week but didn't get any love. "New Horizons Picks Up Styx"

New images from NASA’s New Horizons reveal the size and shape of Pluto’s smallest moon, Styx.

Styx – also the faintest of Pluto’s five moons – was discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012, when New Horizons was more than two-thirds into its voyage to Pluto. The Styx images downlinked on Oct. 5, 2015, were taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 13, approximately 12.5 hours before New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto.

At that time, the spacecraft was still 391,000 miles (631,000 kilometers) from Styx, making it difficult even for the powerful LORRI camera to see details on such a small moon. “Although it may not look like much, the new composite image of Styx reveals a highly-elongated satellite, roughly 4.5 miles [7 kilometers] across in its longest dimension and 3 miles [5 kilometers] in its shortest dimension,” said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland.

This Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) composite image of Pluto’s smallest moon, Styx, was taken July 14, 2015, when the New Horizons spacecraft was 391,000 miles (631,000 kilometers) from the tiny moon. The image reveals a highly-elongated satellite, roughly 4.5 miles [7 kilometers] across in its longest dimension and 3 miles [5 kilometers] in its shortest dimension. For context, the orbits of Pluto’s moons are shown above.

 

[cameron]

Image Feature: "Charon, Up Close"

This mosaic of Pluto’s largest moon Charon was taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons shortly before closest approach on July 14, 2015; it resolves details as small as 340 yards (310 meters). The scene at bottom is about 125 miles (200 kilometers) across.

The sweeping mosaic above is made from the highest-resolution images that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will return of Charon. This view extends from the limb at left to the terminator, or day-night line, at right.

From the left, the view moves from rugged cratered terrain, across the great faulted canyons of the Serenity Chasma, and onto the resurfaced plains of Vulcan Planum, both informally named. The expanded view of Vulcan Planum at bottom, with its rilles (grooves or long, narrow depressions) and intermittently spaced impact craters, highlights a landscape reminiscent of the volcanic plains on Earth’s moon (lunar mare). However, while the lunar maria are made of basalt, these plains on Charon consist of water ice.

Press Release: "Pluto’s Puzzling Patterns and Pits"

This image was taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft shortly before closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015; it resolves details as small as 270 yards (250 meters). The scene shown is about 130 miles (210 kilometers) across. The sun illuminates the scene from the left, and north is to the upper left.

Scientists believe that this area, informally known as Sputnik Planum, is composed of volatile ices such as solid nitrogen. They theorize that the pits and troughs – typically hundreds of meters across and tens of meters deep – are possibly formed by sublimation or evaporation of these ices. However, the reasons for the striking shapes and alignments of these features are a mystery. Adding to the intrigue is that even at this resolution, no impact craters are seen, testifying to the extreme geologic youth of Sputnik Planum.

 

[Insane Metal]

Those are... holes? The hell? I'm calling it... it's aliens.

 

[Joey Fox]

Those are... holes? The hell? I'm calling it... it's aliens.

They look like tracks! Hundreds of meter wide tracks!

 

[Charles Foster Kane]

In that pic that surface looks so smooth. It's beautiful.

 

[Slayer-33]

What's with the holes?!

 

[cameron]

"Last of Pluto’s Moons – Mysterious Kerberos – Revealed by New Horizons"

Kerberos Revealed. This image of Kerberos was created by combining four individual Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) pictures taken on July 14, approximately seven hours before New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto, at a range of 245,600 miles (396,100 km) from Kerberos. The image was deconvolved to recover the highest possible spatial resolution and oversampled by a factor of eight to reduce pixilation effects. Kerberos appears to have a double-lobed shape, approximately 7.4 miles (12 kilometers) across in its long dimension and 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) in its shortest dimension.

Kerberos appears to be smaller than scientists expected and has a highly-reflective surface, counter to predictions prior to the Pluto flyby in July. “Once again, the Pluto system has surprised us,” said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

The new data, downlinked from the New Horizons spacecraft on Oct. 20, show that Kerberos appears to have a double-lobed shape, with the larger lobe approximately 5 miles (8 kilometers) across and the smaller lobe approximately 3 miles (5 kilometers) across. Science team members speculate from its unusual shape that Kerberos could have been formed by the merger of two smaller objects. The reflectivity of Kerberos’ surface is similar to that of Pluto’s other small moons (approximately 50 percent) and strongly suggests Kerberos, like the others, is coated with relatively clean water ice.

Family Portrait of Pluto’s Moons: This composite image shows a sliver of Pluto’s large moon, Charon, and all four of Pluto’s small moons, as resolved by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on the New Horizons spacecraft. All the moons are displayed with a common intensity stretch and spatial scale (see scale bar). Charon is by far the largest of Pluto’s moons, with a diameter of 751 miles (1,212 kilometers). Nix and Hydra have comparable sizes, approximately 25 miles (40 kilometers) across in their longest dimension above. Kerberos and Styx are much smaller and have comparable sizes, roughly 6-7 miles (10-12 kilometers) across in their longest dimension. All four small moons have highly elongated shapes, a characteristic thought to be typical of small bodies in the Kuiper Belt.

"The Youngest Crater on Charon?"

Charon’s Young Ammonia Crater. The informally named Organa crater (shown in green) is rich in frozen ammonia and – so far – appears to be unique on Pluto’s largest moon.

The crater, informally named Organa, caught scientists’ attention as they were studying the highest-resolution infrared compositional scan of Charon. Organa and portions of the surrounding material ejected from it show infrared absorption at wavelengths of about 2.2 microns, indicating that the crater is rich in frozen ammonia – and, from what scientists have seen so far, unique on Pluto’s largest moon. The infrared spectrum of nearby Skywalker crater, for example, is similar to the rest of Charon's craters and surface, with features dominated by ordinary water ice.

This composite image is based on observations from the New Horizons Ralph/LEISA instrument made at 10:25 UT (6:25 a.m. EDT) on July 14, 2015, when New Horizons was 50,000 miles (81,000 kilometers) from Charon. The spatial resolution is 3 miles (5 kilometers) per pixel. The LEISA data were downlinked Oct. 1-4, 2015, and processed into a map of Charon's 2.2 micron ammonia-ice absorption band. Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) panchromatic images used as the background in this composite were taken about 8:33 UT (4:33 a.m. EDT) July 14 at a resolution of 0.6 miles (0.9 kilometers) per pixel and downlinked Oct. 5-6. The ammonia absorption map from LEISA is shown in green on the LORRI image. The region covered by the yellow box is 174 miles across (280 kilometers).

Using telescopes, scientists first observed ammonia absorption on Charon in 2000, but the concentrations of ammonia around this crater are unprecedented.

"Why are these two similar-looking and similar-sized craters, so near to each other, so compositionally distinct?" asked Will Grundy, New Horizons Composition team lead from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. "We have various ideas when it comes to the ammonia in Organa. The crater could be younger, or perhaps the impact that created it hit a pocket of ammonia-rich subsurface ice. Alternatively, maybe Organa’s impactor delivered its own ammonia."

Both craters are about the same size – roughly 5 kilometers [3 miles] in diameter – with similar appearances, including bright wisps or rays of ejected material, or ejecta. One apparent difference is that Organa has a central region of darker ejecta, though from the map created with data from New Horizons’ Ralph/LEISA instrument, it appears that the ammonia-rich material extends beyond this dark area.

"A Full View of Pluto’s Stunning Crescent" (8888x5000, 2.31 MB jpeg)

In September, the New Horizons team released a stunning but incomplete image of Pluto’s crescent. Thanks to new processing work by the science team, New Horizons is releasing the entire, breathtaking image of Pluto.

This image was made just 15 minutes after New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, as the spacecraft looked back at Pluto toward the sun. The wide-angle perspective of this view shows the deep haze layers of Pluto's atmosphere extending all the way around Pluto, revealing the silhouetted profiles of rugged plateaus on the night (left) side. The shadow of Pluto cast on its atmospheric hazes can also be seen at the uppermost part of the disk. On the sunlit side of Pluto (right), the smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum is flanked to the west (above, in this orientation) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. Below (east) of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers.

The backlighting highlights more than a dozen high-altitude layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere. The horizontal streaks in the sky beyond Pluto are stars, smeared out by the motion of the camera as it tracked Pluto. The image was taken with New Horizons' Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto. The resolution is 700 meters (0.4 miles).

Alex Parker
‏@Alex_Parker
Another wonderful thing about that new image: the bright haze gives us a look at how bumpy Pluto's shadowed limb is!

https://twitter.com/Alex_Parker/status/659816246083358720

 

[Insane Metal]

So, an ammonia ice meteorite hit Charon? And that picture of Pluto is absurdly beautiful. <3

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

Thanks for the updates cameron

 

[sphinx]

Thanks for the updates cameron

I have to underline this, thank you very much for the updates,

I am sure many of use are subscribed to this topic and are eager to so it updated.

 

[cameron]

^The updates are no problem. It's a fun/interesting thread. A bunch of new info was released today. It was embargoed for DPS 2015.

Conference Slides: "Science Results from the New Horizons Encounter with Pluto"

Nature: "Icy volcanoes may dot Pluto's surface"

NASA Press Release: "Four Months after Pluto Flyby, NASA’s New Horizons Yields Wealth of Discovery"

From possible ice volcanoes to twirling moons, NASA’s New Horizons science team is discussing more than 50 exciting discoveries about Pluto at this week’s 47th Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences in National Harbor, Maryland.

"Ice Volcanoes on Pluto?"

The informally named feature Wright Mons, located south of Sputnik Planum on Pluto, is an unusual feature that's about 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide and 13,000 feet (4 kilometers) high. It displays a summit depression (visible in the center of the image) that's approximately 35 miles (56 kilometers) across, with a distinctive hummocky texture on its sides. The rim of the summit depression also shows concentric fracturing. New Horizons scientists believe that this mountain and another, Piccard Mons, could have been formed by the 'cryovolcanic' eruption of ices from beneath Pluto's surface.

"Ice Volcanoes and Topography"

Scientists using New Horizons images of Pluto's surface to make 3-D topographic maps have discovered that two of Pluto’s mountains, informally named Wright Mons and Piccard Mons, could possibly be ice volcanoes. The color is shown to depict changes in elevation, with blue indicating lower terrain and brown showing higher elevation; green terrains are at intermediate heights.

"Craters of All Ages and Sizes"

Locations of more than 1,000 craters mapped on Pluto by NASA's New Horizons mission indicate a wide range of surface ages, which likely means that Pluto has been geologically active throughout its history.

"Merged Bodies"

New Horizons data indicates that at least two (and possibly all four) of Pluto's small moons may be the result of mergers between still smaller moons. If this discovery is borne out with further analysis, it could provide important new clues to the formation of the Pluto system.

"Pluto's Pits"

New Horizons cameras have spied swarms of mysterious "pits" across the informally named Sputnik Planum. Scientists believe the pits may form through a combination of sublimation and ice fracturing.

Pluto's Spinning Moons (Video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei5aF6Bw56E&feature=youtu.be

Most inner moons in the solar system keep one face pointed toward their central planet; this animation shows that certainly isn’t the case with the small moons of Pluto, which behave like spinning tops. Pluto is shown at center with, in order from closest to farthest orbit, its moons Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.

 

[jmdajr]

Cool. Still fascinated.

 

[Insane Metal]

So freaking cool. Thank you for the updates.

But that ice volcano kinda looks like an asshole.

 

[cameron]

Press Release: "New Horizons Returns First, Best Images of Pluto"

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first in a series of the sharpest views of Pluto it obtained during its July flyby – and the best close-ups of Pluto that humans may see for decades.

Each week the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft transmits data stored on its digital recorders from its flight through the Pluto system on July 14. These latest pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel – revealing features less than half the size of a city block on Pluto’s diverse surface. In these new images, New Horizons captured a wide variety of cratered, mountainous and glacial terrains.

“These close-up images, showing the diversity of terrain on Pluto, demonstrate the power of our robotic planetary explorers to return intriguing data to scientists back here on planet Earth,” said John Grunsfeld, former astronaut and associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “New Horizons thrilled us during the July flyby with the first close images of Pluto, and as the spacecraft transmits the treasure trove of images in its onboard memory back to us, we continue to be amazed by what we see."

These latest images form a strip 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide on a world 3 billion miles away. The pictures trend from Pluto’s jagged horizon about 500 miles (800 kilometers) northwest of the informally named Sputnik Planum, across the al-Idrisi mountains, over the shoreline of Sputnik, and across its icy plains.

"The Mountainous Shoreline of Sputnik Planum"

In this highest-resolution image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, great blocks of Pluto’s water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains. Some mountain sides appear coated in dark material, while other sides are bright. Several sheer faces appear to show crustal layering, perhaps related to the layers seen in some of Pluto’s crater walls. Other materials appear crushed between the mountains, as if these great blocks of water ice, some standing as much as 1.5 miles high, were jostled back and forth. The mountains end abruptly at the shoreline of the informally named Sputnik Planum, where the soft, nitrogen-rich ices of the plain form a nearly level surface, broken only by the fine trace work of striking, cellular boundaries and the textured surface of the plain’s ices (which is possibly related to sunlight-driven ice sublimation). This view is about 50 miles wide. The top of the image is to Pluto’s northwest.

"Pluto’s Badlands"

This highest-resolution image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shows how erosion and faulting has sculpted this portion of Pluto’s icy crust into rugged badlands. The prominent 1.2-mile-high cliff at the top, running from left to upper right, is part of a great canyon system that stretches for hundreds of miles across Pluto’s northern hemisphere. New Horizons team members think that the mountains in the middle are made of water ice, but have been modified by the movement of nitrogen or other exotic ice glaciers over long periods of time, resulting in a muted landscape of rounded peaks and intervening sets of short ridges. At the bottom of this 50-mile-wide image, the terrain transforms dramatically into a fractured and finely broken up floor at the northwest margin of the giant ice plain informally called Sputnik Planum. The top of the image is to Pluto’s northwest.

"Layered Craters and Icy Plains"

This highest-resolution image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reveals new details of Pluto’s rugged, icy cratered plains. Notice the layering in the interior walls of many craters (the large crater at upper right is a good example) – layers in geology usually mean an important change in composition or event but at the moment New Horizons team members do not know if they are seeing local, regional or global layering. The darker crater in the lower center is apparently younger than the others, because dark material ejected from within – its “ejecta blanket” – have not been erased and can still be made out. The origin of the many dark linear features trending roughly vertically in the bottom half of the image is under debate, but may be tectonic. Most of the craters seen here lie within the 155-mile (250-kilometer)-wide Burney Basin, whose outer rim or ring forms the line of hills or low mountains at bottom. The basin is informally named after Venetia Burney, the English schoolgirl who first proposed the name “Pluto” for the newly discovered planet in 1930.

"Mosaic of Pluto’s Craters, Mountains and Glaciers"

Hires (1350x6929): http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-craters-mountains-glaciers.jpg

This mosaic is composed of the sharpest views of Pluto that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft obtained during its flyby of the distant planet on July 14, 2015. The pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel – revealing features smaller than half a city block on Pluto’s diverse surface. The images include a wide variety of spectacular, cratered, mountainous and glacial terrains – giving scientists and the public alike a breathtaking, super-high resolution window on Pluto’s geology.

The images form a strip 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide trending from Pluto’s jagged horizon about 500 miles (800 kilometers) northwest of the informally named Sputnik Planum, across the al-Idrisi mountains, onto the shoreline of Sputnik Planum and then across its icy plains. They were made with the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons, over a timespan of about a minute centered on 11:36 UT on July 14 – just about 15 minutes before New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto –from a range of just 10,000 miles (17,000 kilometers). They were obtained with an unusual observing mode; instead of working in the usual “point and shoot,” LORRI snapped pictures every three seconds while the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) aboard New Horizons was scanning the surface. This mode requires unusually short exposures to avoid blurring the images.

"New Horizons' Very Best View of Pluto (movie)"
MP4: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/common/cont...of Pluto-15-02652_PressReleaseNEW_50sec_3.mp4
NASA Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0xkupKwjfM&feature=youtu.be

This movie is composed of the sharpest views of Pluto that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft obtained during its flyby of the distant planet on July 14, 2015. The pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel – revealing features smaller than half a city block on Pluto’s diverse surface. The images include a wide variety of spectacular, cratered, mountainous and glacial terrains – giving scientists and the public alike a breathtaking, super-high resolution window on Pluto’s geology.

Looking ahead. Press Release: "A Distant Close-up: New Horizons’ Camera Captures a Wandering Kuiper Belt Object"

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft recently took the closest images ever of a distant Kuiper Belt object – demonstrating its ability to observe numerous such bodies over the next several years if NASA approves an extended mission into the Kuiper Belt.

In this short animation, consisting of four frames taken by the spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on Nov. 2, and spaced an hour apart, one can see this 90-mile (150-kilometer)-wide ancient body, officially called 1994 JR1, moving against a background of stars. When these images were made, 1994 JR1 was 3.3 billion miles (5.3 billion miles) from the sun, but only 170 million miles (280 million kilometers) away from New Horizons. This sets a record, by a factor of at least 15, for the closest-ever picture of a small body in the Kuiper Belt, the solar system’s “third zone” beyond the inner, rocky planets and outer, icy gas giants.

Mission scientists plan to use images like these to study many more ancient Kuiper Belt objects from New Horizons if an extended mission is approved. New Horizons flew through the Pluto system on July 14, making the first close-up observations of Pluto and its family of five moons. The spacecraft is on course for a close flyby of another Kuiper Belt object, 2014 MU69, on Jan. 1, 2019.

 

[owlbeak]

Press Release: "New Horizons Returns First, Best Images of Pluto"


"The Mountainous Shoreline of Sputnik Planum"



"Pluto’s Badlands"



"Layered Craters and Icy Plains"



"Mosaic of Pluto’s Craters, Mountains and Glaciers"

Hires (1350x6929): http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nh-craters-mountains-glaciers.jpg


"New Horizons' Very Best View of Pluto (movie)"
MP4: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/common/cont...of Pluto-15-02652_PressReleaseNEW_50sec_3.mp4
NASA Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0xkupKwjfM&feature=youtu.be



Looking ahead. Press Release: "A Distant Close-up: New Horizons’ Camera Captures a Wandering Kuiper Belt Object"

Amazing photos!

 

[ShironRedshift]

Fascinating. Those photos are just stunning. What an incredible place the Pluto system turned out to be. Thank you very much for keeping this tread updated! ^_^

 

[Orbis Tabula]

Simply incredible.

 

[sphinx]

am I crazy for liking Pluto more than Mars?

Sunset and sky on mars is so underwhelming and it's just rocks and sand. There's something about the surface of pluto being all white and cold that makes it so endearing.

 

[The Sum of Zero]

Beautiful photos. Thanks for keeping the thread updated.

 

[AngmarsKing701]

Amazing stuff. I wonder how many of the assumptions made about Pluto before New Horizons was launched have been completely blown away by what they've found.

 

[Slayer-33]

This is incredible

 

[Xun]

Phenomenal stuff.

Such a beautiful planet.

 

[fallout]

Such a beautiful planet.

Subtle.

 

[Chuck]

Have we ever gotten that "Charon shine" photo? I forget the context of that stuff.

 

[GK86]

Some more images:

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

So gorgeous.

 

[cameron]

Press Release: "New Findings from NASA’s New Horizons Shape Understanding of Pluto and its Moons"

New Horizons science team members are highlighting the latest findings from the Pluto flyby at this week’s American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting in San Francisco. Among the highlights are insights into Pluto’s geology and composition, as well as new details about the unexpected haze in Pluto’s atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind.

“We’re much less than halfway through transmitting data about the Pluto system to Earth, but a wide variety of new scientific results are already emerging,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Brief summaries of the various findings in the above link. Talks about both Pluto and Charon. They'll probably release more detailed info soon.

Emily Lakdawalla @elakdawalla:

Oliver white: Pluto Sputnik planum "islands" may be water ice bergs floating in solid, convecting nitrogen ice. #AGU15

"Zigzagging across Pluto" (1400x9200)

This high-resolution swath of Pluto (right) sweeps over the cratered plains at the west of the New Horizons’ encounter hemisphere and across numerous prominent faults, skimming the eastern margin of the dark, forbidding region informally known as Cthulhu Regio, and finally passing over the mysterious, possibly cryovolcanic edifice Wright Mons, before reaching the terminator or day-night line. Among the many notable details shown are the overlapping and infilling relationships between units of the relatively smooth, bright volatile ices from Sputnik Planum (at the edge of the mosaic) and the dark edge or “shore” of Cthulhu. The pictures in this mosaic were taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) in “ride-along” mode with the LEISA spectrometer, which accounts for the ‘zigzag’ or step pattern. Taken shortly before New Horizons’ July 14 closest approach to Pluto, details as small as 500 yards (500 meters) can be seen.

Highlights by Alex Parker (@Alex_Parker)

So much contrast, so many kinds of landscapes. Wrinkles, ridges, mountains, pits, craters.

Chasms, chasms everywhere.

Insane Metal's ice volcano that does look a bit like an asshole:

I mean, how weird is this thing?

Not related to the above, but still kinda neat:

If you could drift with the winds in Pluto's skies, you might witness a Charonrise. [Artist's concept]

Image Feature: "Pluto’s Moon Nix, Half Illuminated"

This recently received panchromatic image of Pluto’s small satellite Nix taken by the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) aboard New Horizons is one of the best images of Pluto’s third-largest moon generated by the NASA mission. Taken on July 14 at a range of about 14,000 miles (23,000 kilometers) from Nix, the illuminated surface is about 12 miles (19 kilometers) by 29 miles (47 kilometers). The unique perspective of this image provides new details about Nix’s geologic history and impact record.

----------------

Have we ever gotten that "Charon shine" photo? I forget the context of that stuff.

It sounds familiar, but I'm not sure. Was it related to this ("Pluto and Charon Shine in False Color") or something else?

 

[Crispy75]

It sounds familiar, but I'm not sure. Was it related to this ("Pluto and Charon Shine in False Color") or something else?

They were going to take pictures of Pluto's dark side, illuminated by the faint light reflected off Charon. Right at the limits of sensitivity of the sensor. No idea if they have the data yet.

 

[Insane Metal]

OMG these new images are astounding!

Man, space exploration is absolutely nuts, I love it with the whole of my heart. Just a few months ago the best image we had of Pluto was this blurry mess:

Now we have close up detail shots. And we were surprised with a body full of interesting features, some completely unexpected. Love you, Pluto. Love you, NASA. &#128151;

 

[Chuck]

Not related to the above, but still kinda neat:

Breathtaking. Can I please get a color corrected version? :3

It sounds familiar, but I'm not sure. Was it related to this ("Pluto and Charon Shine in False Color") or something else?

i think the idea was to get an image of plutos back side using the shine from charon's surface. It might not have been sent back yet.

 

[The Sum of Zero]

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/charon-s-night-side

After its close approach to Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft snapped this hauntingly beautiful image of the night side of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon.

Only an imager on the far side of Pluto could catch such a view, with a bright, thin sliver of Charon near the lower left illuminated by the sun. Night has fallen over the rest of this side of Charon, yet despite the lack of sunlight over most of the surface, Charon’s nighttime landscapes are still faintly visible by light softly reflected off Pluto, just as “Earthshine” lights up a new moon each month. Charon is 750 miles (1,214 kilometers) in diameter, approximately as wide as Texas.

Scientists on the New Horizons team are using this and similar images to map portions of Charon otherwise not visible during the flyby. This includes Charon’s south pole – toward the top of this image – which entered polar night in 1989 and will not see sunlight again until 2107. Charon’s polar temperatures drop to near absolute zero during this long winter.

This combination of 16 one-second exposures was taken by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) at 2:30 UT on July 17, 2015, nearly three days after closest approach to Pluto and Charon, from a range of 1.9 million miles (3.1 million kilometers).

 

[Version 3.0]

I came across a nice article today:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/17/science/pluto-images-charon-moons-new-horizons-flyby.html?_r=0

 

[Chuck]

Isn't that a false color image?

 

[Mengy]

Pluto most likely has a liquid ocean under it's surface.


Man, Pluto sure is an interesting little planetoid. Much more so than I expected it to be.

 

[jmdajr]

Pluto most likely has a liquid ocean under it's surface.


Man, Pluto sure is an interesting little planetoid. Much more so than I expected it to be.

aliens!

 

[fallout]

Isn't that a false color image?

Isn't what a false colour image?

 

[Chuck]

Isn't what a false colour image?

The image at the top of the NYT article. I keep seeing it everywhere online without any context. It's an enhanced color image to show of the different composition of the planet. Pluto is brown, not brown-red, light blue and yellow. It's somewhat alarming that when I good "Pluto" that the first result is the false color image.

 

[fallout]

The image at the top of the NYT article. I keep seeing it everywhere online without any context. It's an enhanced color image to show of the different composition of the planet. Pluto is brown, not brown-red, light blue and yellow. It's somewhat alarming that when I good "Pluto" that the first result is the false color image.

Oh, yeah. That one's false colour. I think journalists just gravitate towards those shots because they're prettier, which is rather unfortunate. Like you allude to, without the context, it gives people a misleading impression.

This one is true colour, though: http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/global-mosaic-of-pluto-in-true-color

It's still pretty nice to look at. Of course, Pluto likely wouldn't look like that if you were there. I presume it'd be significantly dimmer and the differences in the browns would not be as striking.

 

[OraleeWey]

Sorry for th e lack of info and a mobile link, but in on mobile.

However, new horizons image shows a frozen lake on Pluto.




http://m.phys.org/news/2016-03-horizons-imagery-reveals-small-frozen.html

 

[The Sum of Zero]

Pluto's Icy Moon Hydra

NASA&#8217;s New Horizons spacecraft has sent home the first compositional data about Pluto's four small satellites. The new data show the surface of Hydra, Pluto&#8217;s outermost small moon, is dominated by nearly pristine water ice &#8211; confirming hints that scientists picked up in New Horizons images showing Hydra&#8217;s highly reflective surface.

The new compositional data, recently received on Earth, was gathered with the Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 150,000 miles (240,000 kilometers).

More at the link.

 

[Chuck]

Hydra vs Sixtysevenpea

in

The Rubber Duck Off

 

[Sober]

The more water we find in the solar system the more money Nestle can pour into SpaceX.

 

[Chuck]

The more water we find in the solar system the more money Nestle can pour into SpaceX.

I imagine the nestle ceo shooting his laser eyes to melt Hydra while laughing maniacally.

 

[GK86]

New Horizons is officially off to the Kuiper Belt.

Following its historic first-ever flyby of Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons mission has received the green light to fly onward to an object deeper in the Kuiper Belt, known as 2014 MU69. The spacecraft’s planned rendezvous with the ancient object – considered one of the early building blocks of the solar system -- is Jan. 1, 2019.

“The New Horizons mission to Pluto exceeded our expectations and even today the data from the spacecraft continue to surprise,” said NASA’s Director of Planetary Science Jim Green. “We’re excited to continue onward into the dark depths of the outer solar system to a science target that wasn’t even discovered when the spacecraft launched.”

 

[HamPster PamPster]

It's been 10 years friends

Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule

August 24, 2006

Pluto has been voted off the island. The distant, ice-covered world is no longer a true planet, according to a new definition of the term voted on by scientists today. "Whoa! Pluto's dead," said astronomer Mike Brown, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, as he watched a Webcast of the vote. "There are finally, officially, eight planets in the solar system."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060824-pluto-planet.html

#NeverForget

 

[Xe4]

It's been 10 years friends

#NeverForget

I feel no pity for Pluto, though my favorite number is 9. We may get back there with the discovery of a transneptunian giant which a lot of evidence seems to be pointing to.

 

[The Last Wizard]

It's been 10 years friends

#NeverForget

Fuck them fuckers.

 

[G.ZZZ]

We're getting a ninth giant planet tho'. Hope they name it Lucifer just to make christians mad.

 

[sphinx]

We may get back there with the discovery of a transneptunian giant which a lot of evidence seems to be pointing to.

We're getting a ninth giant planet tho'.

woah I didn't know there was the possibility, is there any link to the details?