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.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
A brand new batch of Pluto and Charon photos showed up today on the New Horizons LORRI (LOng-Range Reconnaissance Imager) site. The photos were taken during the close flyby of the system on July 14, 2015 and show rich detail including craters and parallel cracks on Charon and thousands of small pits punctuating Pluto’s nitrogen ice landscape. Have at ’em!
This wider view shows the snakeskin-like textured surface of Pluto’s icy plains riddled with small pits. It almost looks like the dark areas in the sinuous channels between the mounds were once covered with frost or ice that has since sublimated away. They look similar to the polar regions on Mars where carbon dioxide frost burns off in the spring to reveal darker material beneath. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
The first couple images feature the region informally known as Sputnik Planum. According to a releasefrom NASA today, scientists think the region 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 in Pluto’s thin atmosphere. Still, their curious shapes and alignments remain a mystery. Adding to the intrigue is that even when seen up close, no impact craters are visible, testifying to the icy plain’s extreme geologic youth.
By the way, there are more images at the LORRI link at top. I picked a representative selection but I encourage you to visit and explore.
Now that’s what I call getting a photo in low light. Sunlight scrapes across rugged mountains as well as highlight the ubiquitous pitted terrain. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRILife’s definitely the pits on Pluto’s Tombaugh Regio. This photo shows the fainter “ghost” pits well. Is ice filling them in or are we seeing the beginning of a pit’s formation? Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRIA fine view of Pluto’s largest moon Charon and its vast canyon system. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRILooking over Charon’s dark north polar region, the border of which is highlighted by several beautiful rayed craters. Not that it’s necessarily related, but the dark spot reminds me of a lunar mare or sea. On the moon, cracks in the crust allowed lava to fill gigantic basins to create the maria. Could material from beneath Charon have bubbled up to fill an ancient impact? Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRISpeaking of the Moon, the large cracks at left resemble lunar rills, some of which formed through faulting / fracturing and others as conduits for lava flows. The multiple, fine cracks are interesting. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRISplendid rayed crater with an interesting contrast between dark and light ejecta. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRIA busy region on Charon, the meeting place of different terrains. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Special Guest: Dr. Carolyn Porco is the leader of the Cassini Imaging Science team and the Director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
This Galielo image shows Jupiter's moon Ganymede in enhanced colour. The JWST aimed its instruments at our Solar System's largest moon to study its surface. Credit: NASA
In 1610, Galileo Galilei looked up at the night sky through a telescope of his own design. Spotting Jupiter, he noted the presence of several “luminous objects” surrounding it, which he initially took for stars. In time, he would notice that these “stars” were orbiting the planet, and realized that they were in fact Jupiter’s moons – which would come to be named Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
Of these, Ganymede is the largest, and boasts many fascinating characteristics. In addition to being the largest moon in the Solar System, it is also larger than even the planet Mercury. It is the only satellite in the Solar System known to possess a magnetosphere, has a thin oxygen atmosphere, and (much like its fellow-moons, Europa and Callisto) is believed to have an interior ocean.
Pluto’s Blue Sky: Pluto’s haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn’s moon Titan. The source of both hazes likely involves sunlight-initiated chemical reactions of nitrogen and methane, leading to relatively small, soot-like particles (called tholins) that grow as they settle toward the surface. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
With each passing day, significant discoveries about Pluto continue piling up higher and higher as more and more data gathered and stored from this past summer’s historic flyby by NASA’s New Horizons reaches ground stations back here on Earth.
“Blue skies–Pluto is awesome!” says Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.
The bluish tint to Pluto’s skies were unexpectedly discovered after researchers examined the first color images of the high altitude atmospheric hazes returned by New Horizons last week that were taken by the probes Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC).
“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt?” Stern said in a NASA statement.
During New Horizons flyby on July 14, 2015, it discovered that Pluto is the biggest object in the outer solar system and thus the ‘King of the Kuiper Belt.”
The Kuiper Belt comprises the third and outermost region of worlds in our solar system.
“It’s gorgeous!” exclaims Stern.
Moreover, the source of Pluto’s blue haze is different from Earth’s and more related to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon – currently being explored by NASA’s Cassini mission orbiting Saturn since 2004.
On Earth, the blue sky is caused by light scattering off tiny particles of nitrogen molecules. Whereas on Titan its related to soot-like particles called tholins.
Tholins are generated by a series of very complex sunlight-initiated chemical reactions between nitrogen and methane (CH4) high in the atmosphere. This eventually produces relatively small, soot-like particles of complex hydrocarbons.
“That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles,” said New Horizons science team researcher Carly Howett, of SwRI, in a statement.
“A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger — but still relatively small — soot-like particles we call tholins.”
As the tholins rain down on Pluto, they add to the widespread red surface coloring.
The Ralph instrument was also key in another discovery announced by New Horizons researchers.
Numerous small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto’s surface were discovered by combining measurements from the Ralph MVIC spectral composition mapper and infrared spectroscopy from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument.
The strongest signatures of water ice were found in the Virgil Fossa and Viking Terra regions berby the western edge of Pluto’s huge heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio feature – see image below.
Water Ice on Pluto: Regions with exposed water ice are highlighted in blue in this composite image from New Horizons’ Ralph instrument, combining visible imagery from the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) with infrared spectroscopy from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA). The strongest signatures of water ice occur along Virgil Fossa, just west of Elliot crater on the left side of the inset image, and also in Viking Terra near the top of the frame. A major outcrop also occurs in Baré Montes towards the right of the image, along with numerous much smaller outcrops, mostly associated with impact craters and valleys between mountains. The scene is approximately 280 miles (450 kilometers) across. Note that all surface feature names are informal. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Water ice is only found in certain zones of Pluto for reasons yet to be understood. There may also be a relationship to the tholins, that likewise is yet to be gleaned.
“I’m surprised that this water ice is so red,” says Silvia Protopapa, a science team member from the University of Maryland, College Park. “We don’t yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto’s surface.”
This new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This new mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Annotated with informal place names. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
As of today, New Horizons remains healthy and is over 3.1 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth.
The team hopes to fire up the thrusters later this fall to propel the spacecraft toward a second Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) in 2019 tentativley named PT1, for Potential Target 1. It is much smaller than Pluto and was recently selected based on images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Charon in Enhanced Color. NASA's New Horizons captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon just before closest approach on July 14, 2015. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the spacecraft’s Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC); the colors are processed to best highlight the variation of surface properties across Charon. Charon’s color palette is not as diverse as Pluto’s; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region, informally named Mordor Macula. Charon is 754 miles (1,214 kilometers) across; this image resolves details as small as 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers). Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Charon in Enhanced Color with Grand Canyon
NASA’s New Horizons captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Charon and its Grand Canyon just before closest approach on July 14, 2015. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the spacecraft’s Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC); the colors are processed to best highlight the variation of surface properties across Charon. Charon’s color palette is not as diverse as Pluto’s; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region, informally named Mordor Macula. Charon is 754 miles (1,214 kilometers) across; this image resolves details as small as 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers). Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI[/caption]
Charon suffered such a surprisingly violent past of titanic upheavals that they created a humongous canyon stretching across the entire face of Pluto’s largest moon – as revealed in a fresh batch of images just returned from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.
We have been agog in amazement these past few weeks as New Horizons focused its attention on transmitting astounding high resolution imagery and data of Pluto, captured during mankind’s history making first encounter with our solar systems last unexplored planet on July 14, 2015, at a distance of 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers).
“You’ll love this,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, in a blog posting.
Indeed researches say Charon’s tortured landscape of otherworldly canyons, mountains and more far exceeds scientists preconceived notions of a “monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they’re finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more.”
“We thought the probability of seeing such interesting features on this satellite of a world at the far edge of our solar system was low,” said Ross Beyer, an affiliate of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team from the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, in a statement.
“But I couldn’t be more delighted with what we see.”
Measuring 754 miles (1,214 kilometers) across, Charon is half the diameter of Pluto and forms a double planet system. Charon also ranks as the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system. By comparison, Earth’s moon is one quarter the size of our home planet.
The new images of the Pluto-facing hemisphere of Charon were taken by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) during the July 14 flyby and downlinked over about the past week and a half.
They reveal details of a belt of fractures and canyons just north of the moon’s equator.
High-resolution images of Charon were taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, shortly before closest approach on July 14, 2015, and overlaid with enhanced color from the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). Charon’s cratered uplands at the top are broken by series of canyons, and replaced on the bottom by the rolling plains of the informally named Vulcan Planum. The scene covers Charon’s width of 754 miles (1,214 kilometers) and resolves details as small as 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers). Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
The “Grand Canyon of Charon” stretches more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across the entire face of Charon visible in the new images. Furthermore the deep canyon probably extends onto the far side of Pluto and hearkens back to Valles Marineris on Mars.
“It looks like the entire crust of Charon has been split open,” said John Spencer, deputy lead for GGI at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in a statement.
“With respect to its size relative to Charon, this feature is much like the vast Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars.”
Charon’s “Grand Canyon” is four times as long as the Grand Canyon of the United States. Plus its twice as deep in places. “These faults and canyons indicate a titanic geological upheaval in Charon’s past,” according to the New Horizons team.
This composite of enhanced color images of Pluto (lower right) and Charon (upper left), was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it passed through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015. This image highlights the striking differences between Pluto and Charon. The color and brightness of both Pluto and Charon have been processed identically to allow direct comparison of their surface properties, and to highlight the similarity between Charon’s polar red terrain and Pluto’s equatorial red terrain. Pluto and Charon are shown with approximately correct relative sizes, but their true separation is not to scale. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the spacecraft’s Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Another intriguing finding is the area south of the canyon is much smoother, with fewer craters and may have been resurfaced by a type of “cryovolcanism.”
The southern plains are informally named “Vulcan Planum” and may be much younger.
“The team is discussing the possibility that an internal water ocean could have frozen long ago, and the resulting volume change could have led to Charon cracking open, allowing water-based lavas to reach the surface at that time,” said Paul Schenk, a New Horizons team member from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
The piano shaped probe gathered about 50 gigabits of data as it hurtled past Pluto, its largest moon Charon and four smaller moons.
Barely 5 or 6 percent of the 50 gigabits of data captured by New Horizons has been received by ground stations back on Earth due to the slow downlink rate.
Stern says it will take about a year for all the data to get back. Many astounding discoveries await.
“I predict Charon’s story will become even more amazing!” said mission Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
New Horizons science team co-investigator John Spencer examines print of the newest Pluto image taken on July 13, 2015 after the successful Pluto flyby. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
This new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This new mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Annotated with informal place names. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
This color image of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shows rounded and bizarrely textured mountains, informally named the Tartarus Dorsa, rise up along Pluto’s terminator and show intricate but puzzling patterns of blue-gray ridges and reddish material in between. This view, roughly 330 miles (530 kilometers) across, combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on July 14, 2015, and resolves details and colors on scales as small as 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers). Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Data from that priceless, once in a lifetime flyby is now trickling back to Earth.
The ‘snakeskin’ feature on Pluto’s utterly bizarre surface was unveiled to “astonished” scientists scrutinizing the latest data dump received over the past week, that included images taken by the Ralph instruments Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC).
Features as small as 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers) are resolved in detail.
The MVIC image stretches about 330 miles (530 kilometers) across the ‘snakeskin’ like landscape composed of rounded and bizarrely textured mountains that are informally named Tartarus Dorsa and that borders the bodies day-night terminator.
It shows intricate patterns of blue-gray ridges and reddish material in between that are puzzling researchers.
“It’s a unique and perplexing landscape stretching over hundreds of miles,” said William McKinnon, New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team deputy lead from Washington University in St. Louis.
“It looks more like tree bark or dragon scales than geology. This’ll really take time to figure out; maybe it’s some combination of internal tectonic forces and ice sublimation driven by Pluto’s faint sunlight.”
The Ralph/MVIC image is actually a composite of blue, red and infrared images.
The image of Tartarus Dorsa reveals a “multitude of previously unseen topographic and compositional details. It captures a vast rippling landscape of strange, aligned linear ridges that has astonished New Horizons team members,” say officials.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto on July 14, 2015. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode. The image resolves details and colors on scales as small as 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers). The viewer is encouraged to zoom in on the image on a larger screen to fully appreciate the complexity of Pluto’s surface features. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Another wider angle global view of Pluto downlinked on Sept. 19 shows a new “extended color” view of Pluto with an the extraordinarily rich color palette of the planet.
“We used MVIC’s infrared channel to extend our spectral view of Pluto,” said John Spencer, a GGI deputy lead from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado.
“Pluto’s surface colors were enhanced in this view to reveal subtle details in a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a wonderfully complex geological and climatological story that we have only just begun to decode.”
The image resolves details and colors on scales as small as 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometers).
High-resolution images of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft just before closest approach on July 14, 2015, reveal features as small as 270 yards (250 meters) across, from craters to faulted mountain blocks, to the textured surface of the vast basin informally called Sputnik Planum. Enhanced color has been added from the global color image. This image is about 330 miles (530 kilometers) across. For optimal viewing, zoom in on the image on a larger screen. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Beyond MVIC, additional new images taken by New Horizons’ narrow-angle Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) during the July 14 were downlinked on Sept. 20.
They focus on the Sputnik Planum ice plains on the left side of the famous heart shaped Tombaugh Regio feature and are the highest resolution yet – as seen below. The team added color based on the global MVIC map shown above.
High-resolution images of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft just before closest approach on July 14, 2015, are the sharpest images to date of Pluto’s varied terrain—revealing details down to scales of 270 meters. In this 75-mile (120-kilometer) section of the taken from a larger, high-resolution mosaic, the textured surface of the plain surrounds two isolated ice mountains. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Barely 5 or 6 percent of the 50 gigabits of data captured by New Horizons has been received by ground stations back on Earth.
“With these just-downlinked images and maps, we’ve turned a new page in the study of Pluto beginning to reveal the planet at high resolution in both color and composition,” added New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of SwRI.
“I wish Pluto’s discoverer Clyde Tombaugh had lived to see this day.”
Stern says it will take about a year for all the data to get back. Thus bountiful new discoveries are on tap.
This new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Right side mosaic comprises twelve highest resolution views of Tombaugh Regio heart shaped feature and shows objects as small as 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in size. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/ Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon – shown in this colorized rendition. The smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) 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. To the right, east of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) wide. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute. Colorized/Annotated: Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
This new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Right side mosaic comprises twelve highest resolution views of Tombaugh Regio heart shaped feature and shows objects as small as 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in size. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/ Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
Video caption: This animation of LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) images begins with a low-altitude look at the informally named Norgay Montes, flies northward over the boundary between informally named Sputnik Planum and Cthulhu Regio, turns, and drifts slowly east above Pluto’s heart shaped Tombaugh Regio feature. It then rises about 10 times higher in altitude as NASA’s New Horizons flew closest to Pluto on July 14, 2015. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Stuart Robbins. See additional high resolution global Pluto and Tombaugh Regio mosaics below
Imagine yourself as a once in a lifetime Plutonian tourist sailing along in a spartan spaceship and looking out the windows to breathtaking alien landscapes with cameras snapping away.
Now for the first time in human history, you can embark on a heretofore unimaginable flyover tour over Pluto – the most distant planetary system yet explored by an emissary from Earth, thanks to the team propelling NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft to the far flung reaches of our Solar System.
Just click on the video above and take the astounding aerial flyover tour above Pluto’s huge heart and the icy worlds wondrous array of tectonically active flow plains and majestic mountain ranges towering kilometers skyward to its thin hazy atmosphere.
The animation is a gift to humanity as seen from the perspective of the New Horizons probe as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 at a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers).
The new flyover video beautifully melds “art and science” – and is the brainchild of Stuart Robbins, a New Horizons research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
“I have used the latest images to produce an animation that shows what it might be like to take an aerial tour through Pluto’s thin atmosphere and soar above the surface that New Horizons explored,” Robbins explained in a blog posting.
The flyover animation is based on a stitched together mosaic of New Horizons images that were then rendered onto a sphere of Pluto. The animation and spherical mosaic were created by New Horizons team members using the initial batch of images taken by the LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) camera and downloaded from the spacecraft as of Sept. 11, 2015.
“The mosaic …. provides an incredibly accurate portrayal of Pluto’s surface. It showcases …. the huge variety of terrain types that we see on Pluto.”
The flyover begins low over the heart shaped region of Pluto informally named Tombaugh Regio by the New Horizons team. The LORRI images at the starting point over the Norgay Montes mountain range have a resolution up to 400 meters per pixel at a altitude of only about 120 miles (200 kilometers). The resolution then changes to about 800 meters per pixel.
The animation concludes with images of approximately 2.1 kilometers per pixel as the apparent altitude increases tenfold to about 1,500 miles (2,500 kilometers) as viewers perspective changes from an up close view to one revealing Pluto’s disk rapidly growing to show about 80% of the hemisphere New Horizons flew closest to on July 14, 2015.
Here is Robbins explanation of the Plutonian terrain visible during your tourists eye view:
“Our tour starts low over the informally named Norgay Montes at a height of about 120 miles (200 kilometers). These jagged mountains rise almost 2 miles (3 kilometers) from the surrounding surface.”
“We head north over Sputnik Planum (bright area to the left) and Cthulhu Regio (dark area to the right). While Sputnik Planum is smooth at this pixel scale, it’s in marked contrast to Cthulhu Regio which has many large impact craters that indicate the Regio is much older. The differences in brightness are some of the largest natural brightness variations of any object in the solar system.”
“Our view steadily rises to a height of about 150 miles (240 kilometers) and turns to look east. From this point, we drift slowly to the east, with Pluto’s north pole to the left, Tombaugh Regio filling much of the middle of the view, and older, more cratered areas standing out in marked contrast to the younger glaciers of the “heart’s” left lobe, Sputnik Planum.”
“As we continue to fly, our flight path rises to more than 1,500 miles (2,500 kilometers) with the final view of most of the disk that New Horizons saw on July 14.”
Robbins role on the New Horizons science team is using the images “to map craters across the surfaces of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, to understand the population of impactors from the Kuiper Belt striking Pluto and Charon.”
To see and study the whole disk of Pluto and the highest resolution view of the “heart” check out our global Pluto and Tombaugh Regio mosaics generated from raw images captured by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and stitched together by the image processing team of Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer.
New Horizon’s unveiled Pluto as a surprisingly vibrant and geologically active “icy world of wonders” as it barreled past the Pluto-Charon double planet system on July 14 at over 31,000 mph (49,600 kph) and collected unprecedented high resolution imagery and spectral measurements of the utterly alien worlds.
What are Pluto’s newly discovered plains and mountains composed of?
“The plains are made of nitrogen. But nitrogen is too soft a material to build mountains out of, even in Pluto’s weak gravity,” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.
“So the mountains must be made of something else stronger. Rock and water ice are the two most likely possibilities. But they are most likely water ice.”
Here’s our colorized and annotated version of the recently released backlit view of Pluto taken 15 minutes after closest approach as New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured a near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon.
Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon – shown in this colorized rendition. The smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) 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. To the right, east of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) wide. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute. Colorized/Annotated: Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Since the flyby, the team has been busy analyzing the science data returned thus far and “making some discoveries” says Stern.
“Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we’ve seen in the solar system.”
“If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top — but that’s what is actually there.”
New Horizons gathered about 50 gigabits of data as it hurtled past Pluto, its largest moon Charon and four smaller moons.
New Horizons also discovered that Pluto is the biggest object in the outer solar system and thus the ‘King of the Kuiper Belt’.
The Kuiper Belt comprises the third and outermost region of worlds in our solar system.
Only about 5 to 6 percent has been downlinked to Earth so far. Stern says it will take about a year for all the data to get back.
So expect a year of endless treats and surprises from the ‘King of the Kuiper Belt’!
This new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This new mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Watch for Ken’s continuing coverage of the Pluto flyby. He was onsite reporting live on the flyby and media briefings for Universe Today from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Md.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Pluto’s Majestic Mountains, Frozen Plains and Foggy Hazes: Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) 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. To the right, east of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers. The backlighting highlights over a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) wide.
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
As the hazy, lazy days of summer come to a close, the New Horizons team released a brand new set of incredible images of a very atmospheric Pluto.
Can you believe the detail in these photos? Back-lit by the Sun, we see icy plains, rugged mountains, glacier-cut terrain and multiple layers of haze just like those on a steamy August afternoon.
Just look at those pyramidal mountain peaks right next to those relatively smooth, icy plains. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 km) to Pluto; the scene is 230 miles (380 km) across. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
The scene measures 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) across and was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 km) on July 15 just after closest approach. Because backlighting highlights fine aerosols suspended in the atmosphere (think of seeing your breath on a cold winter day against the Sun), these photos show the amazing complexity of Pluto’s atmosphere with more than a dozen thin haze layers extending from near the ground to at least 60 miles (100 km) above the surface.
In this small section of the larger crescent image of Pluto, the setting sun illuminates a bank of fog or low-lying near-surface haze sliced by the parallel shadows of many local hills and small mountains. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 km), and the width of the image is 115 miles (185 km). Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
“This image really makes you feel you are there, at Pluto, surveying the landscape for yourself,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern in a press release today. “But this image is also a scientific bonanza, revealing new details about Pluto’s atmosphere, mountains, glaciers and plains.”
Sputnik Planum is the informal name of the smooth, light-bulb shaped region on the left of this composite of several New Horizons images of Pluto. The brilliantly white upland region to the right may be coated by nitrogen ice that has been transported through the atmosphere from the surface of Sputnik Planum, and deposited on these uplands. The box shows the location of the glacier detail images below. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
I find the hazes the most amazing aspect of the photos. They remind me of crepuscular rays, those beams of sunshine that shine between breaks in the clouds near sunset and sunrise. It chills and thrills me to the bone to see such earthly sights on a bitterly cold orb more than 3 billion miles from home.
Ice, probably frozen nitrogen, appears to have accumulated on the uplands on the right side of this 390-mile (630-km) wide image is draining from Pluto’s mountains onto the informally named Sputnik Planum through the 2- to 5-mile (3- to 8-km) wide valleys indicated by the red arrows. On Earth this would be considered a valley glacier. The flow front of the ice moving into Sputnik Planum is outlined by the blue arrows. The origin of the ridges and pits on the right side of the image remains uncertain. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
But that’s not all that’s close to our hearts on Pluto. The photos reveal nitrogen ice apparently flowing downhill from mountainous highlands into a broad, smooth basin. Combined with other recently downloaded pictures, this new image (above) provides evidence for a remarkably Earth-like “hydrological” cycle on Pluto – but involving soft and exotic ices, including nitrogen, rather than water ice.
This might be the most remarkable image of all. It covers the same region as the image above, but is re-projected from the oblique, backlit view shown in the new crescent image of Pluto. The backlighting highlights the intricate flow lines on the valley glaciers. The flow front of the ice moving into the informally named Sputnik Planum is outlined by the blue arrows. We’re looking at a scene 390 miles (630 km) across. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Nitrogen ice in the vast, relatively smooth Sputnik Planum may have vaporized in sunlight and then redeposited as ice in the bright, rugged region to its east. The new Ralph imager panorama also reveals glaciers flowing back from the blanketed mountain region into Sputnik Planum; these features are similar to the frozen streams on the margins of ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica.
Who knew that by going to Pluto we’d see such familiarity? But there you have it.
This new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This new mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
This new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This new mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
See annotated version and new hi res Tombaugh Regio mosaic below[/caption]
But because of limited bandwidth the new image data sets were stored onboard the probe until days ago when they were transmitted back to Earth and released by the New Horizons team late in the day on Friday, Sept. 11.
This best yet view of far flung Pluto comes from raw images taken as New Horizons conducted the history making first flyby past Pluto on July 14, 2015, at a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers).
The global Pluto mosaic was generated from over two dozen raw images captured by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and stitched together by the image processing team of Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer.
See also our expanded hi res Tombaugh Regio mosaic below showing features as small as 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in size.
After transmitting carefully selected high priority images and science measurements across over 3 billion miles (about 5 billion kilometers) of interplanetary space in the days around the history making flyby, the team elected to temporarily pause the transmission of new images for several weeks in favor of sending other data important for helping place the entire Pluto planetary system into context.
Altogether, over 50 gigabits of data were collected during the July 14 encounter and flyby periods of the highest scientific activity – which includes the most critical hours before and after the spacecrafts closest approach to Pluto, its largest moon Charon and its quartet of smaller moons.
Highest resolution mosaic of ‘Tombaugh Regio’ shows the heart-shaped region on Pluto including ice flows and plains of ‘Sputnik Planum’ (center) and icy mountain ranges of ‘Hillary Montes’ and ‘Norgay Montes.’ This new mosaic combines the eleven highest resolution images captured by NASA’s New Horizons LORRI imager during history making closest approach flyby on July 14, 2015. It shows features as small as 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in size. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
Data from the flyby continues streaming back to Earth, but rather slowly due to limited bandwidth amounting to an average “downlink” of only about 2 kilobits per second via its two transmitters.
New Horizon’s unveiled Pluto as a surprising vibrant and geologically active “icy world of wonders” as it barreled past the Pluto-Charon double planet system on July 14 at over 31,000 mph (49,600 kph) and collected unprecedented high resolution imagery and spectral measurements of the utterly alien worlds.
Since the flyby, the team has been busy analyzing the science data returned thus far and “making some discoveries” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, during the Weekly Space Hangout on Sept 11.
The team is ecstatic with all the new images and created what they call a synthetic global view of a portion of Pluto.
“We created a synthetic global mosaic view of more than a dozen frames from the LORRI camera, and wrapped it on a sphere and then projected the view as if you were suspended about a thousand miles above the planet – looking back.”
Each LORRI frame is about 400 km across.
This new mosaic of Pluto is from the latest high-resolution images sent to Earth from the New Horizons spacecraft shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) above Pluto’s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, informally named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains informally called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) across. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
“It gives a breathtaking view of how diverse the geology is and also how diverse the seasonal volatile transport must be across the surface.”
“It’s just absolutely magical and breathtaking. There is a lot going on there.”
“The big bright area on the left side of the heart shaped feature is informally called Sputnik Planum after the first spacecraft – Sputnik. Surrounding the Texas sized plain are steep mountain ranges that are as tall as the Rockies in Colorado.”
What are Pluto’s plains and mountains comprised of?
“We know that the mountain ranges are not made of the same stuff as the planum, or plains. The plains are made of nitrogen. But nitrogen is too soft a material to build mountains out of, even in Pluto’s weak gravity.”
“So the mountains must be made of something else stronger. Rock and water ice are the two most likely possibilities. But they are most likely water ice, the lighter stuff. Because the rock has almost certainly sunk to the center of Pluto and the ice has floated to the top and formed the mantle and perhaps the crust of Pluto.”
“So we think the volatiles like the nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide you see there and that shifts around with the seasons and interacts with the atmosphere – is just a veneer. It’s just a coating on the surface. And in some places its very thin and looks like it is breaking up on the margins. In other places it may be quite thick, maybe even kilometers thick.”
“We’ll see when we have more data!” exclaimed Stern.
“The data downlink will take over a year to get all the data to the ground [on Earth].”
“Over 50 gigabits of science data from the Pluto system needs to be sent back. The Pluto flyby took place on the 50th anniversary of NASA’s first flyby of Mars by Mariner IV. New Horizons dataset amounted to several thousand times more data collected compared to what Mariner IV sent back during its first flyby of Mars,” Stern elaborated.
“The surface of Pluto is every bit as complex as that of Mars,” says Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “The randomly jumbled mountains might be huge blocks of hard water ice floating within a vast, denser, softer deposit of frozen nitrogen within the region informally named Sputnik Planum.”
How much data has been returned so far varies by instrument.
“The average across all the entire science payload is only about 5 or 6 percent so far,” Stern explained.
“All the flyby data from the two plasma instruments – PEPSI and SWAP – and the Student Dust Counter instrument is back on the ground, because they were small datasets.”
“But less than 3% of the ALICE UV spectrometer data is back so far. And for the other imaging instruments its similar.”
“So it’s going to take about another year to send all the data back!”
This new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This new mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Annotated with informal place names. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Stern informed that the team has submitted a paper to the journal Science and plans a large series of technical scientific presentations at upcoming meetings, including the Division of Planetary Sciences Meeting in Washington in November.
And New Horizons is in excellent shape to get those 50 gigabits of data back to the eagerly waiting researchers since all the spacecraft systems are operating normally.
“The spacecraft is doing very well,” said Alice Bowman, New Horizons Mission Operations Manager of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), during the Weekly Space Hangout.
“It’s very healthy and we are getting back gobs of data – causing a flurry of emails among the science team.”
“It’s been a good ride and we had a good flyby of Jupiter too [along the way].”
This new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Right side mosaic comprises twelve highest resolution views of Tombaugh Regio heart shaped feature and shows objects as small as 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometers) in size. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/ Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
New Horizons also discovered that Pluto is the largest known body beyond Neptune – and thus reigns as the “King of the Kuiper Belt!”
As of today, Sept. 14, New Horizons is 2 months past the Pluto flyby and already over 73 million kilometers ( over 45 million miles) beyond Pluto and continuing its journey into the Kuiper Belt, the third realm of worlds in our solar system.
The science team plans to target New Horizons to fly by another much smaller Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) in 2019 after recently selecting the object dubbed PT1, for Potential Target 1, based on images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
“Since the flyby, we have been planning for the extended mission which we will propose to NASA next year,” Stern explained. NASA will then decide whether to approve and fund the new KBO mission proposal.
“We expect to do an engine burn for that [new KBO target] next month [in October]. The KBO flyby will take place about a billion miles beyond Pluto at about 44 AU.”
The actual flyby distance of New Horizons from the KBO is yet to be determined. Stern thinks it could perhaps be much closer, but all those details still need to be worked out.
NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate John Grunsfeld, left, New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, CO, second from left, New Horizons Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), second from right, and New Horizons Project Manager Glen Fountain of APL, right, are seen at the conclusion of a press conference after the team received confirmation from the spacecraft that it has completed the flyby of Pluto, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Watch for Ken’s continuing coverage of the Pluto flyby. He was onsite reporting live on the flyby and media briefings for Universe Today from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Md.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Pluto Explored at Last
The New Horizons mission team celebrates successful flyby of Pluto in the moments after closest approach at 7:49 a.m. EDT on July 14, 2015. New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, CO., left, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Director Ralph Semmel, center, and New Horizons Co-Investigator Will Grundy Lowell Observatory hold an enlarged print of an U.S. stamp with their suggested update after Pluto became the final planet in our solar system to be explored by an American space probe (crossing out the words ‘not yet’) – at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.comHighest resolution mosaic of ‘Tombaugh Regio’ shows the heart-shaped region on Pluto focusing on ice flows and plains of ‘Sputnik Planum’ at top and icy mountain ranges of ‘Hillary Montes’ and ‘Norgay Montes’ below. This new mosaic combines the seven highest resolution images captured by NASA’s New Horizons LORRI imager during history making closest approach flyby on July 14, 2015. Inset at right shows global view of Pluto with location of mosaic and huge heart-shaped region in context. Annotated with place names. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI/ Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.comThis new global mosaic view of Pluto was created from the latest high-resolution images to be downlinked from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and released on Sept. 11, 2015. The images were taken as New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers). This new mosaic was stitched from over two dozen raw images captured by the LORRI imager and colorized. Right side inset from New Horizons team focuses on Tombaugh Regio heart shaped feature. Annotated with informal place names. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Special Guests:New Horizons staff Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator; Alice Bowman, Mission Operations Manager; and Emily Lakdawalla from The Planetary Society
