For all of you who visit my blog on a regular basis, I apologize that this summer has been so crazy busy that I have not had time to post on a regular basis. There just does not seem to be enough hours in the day to get everything done.
This morning, however, I decided that I want to understand more about what the New Horizons mission has learned about Pluto. The images in this post were acquired from
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/images/index.html.
Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Pluto’s bright, mysterious “heart” is rotating into view, ready for its
close-up on close approach, in this image taken by New Horizons on July
12 from a distance of 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers).
Image Credit: NASA/JUAPL/SwRI
Pluto and Charon are shown in the above composite of natural-color images from
New Horizons. Images
were combined with color data to produce these
views, which portray Pluto and Charon as an observer riding on the
spacecraft would see them. The images were acquired on July 13 and 14,
2015.
The photo was taken about
five hours before closest approach to Pluto, from a range of 150,000
miles (250,000 kilometers). The image highlights the contrasting
appearance of the two worlds: Charon is mostly gray, -- with a dark
reddish polar cap -- while Pluto shows a wide variety of subtle color
variations, including yellowish patches on the north polar cap and
subtly contrasting colors for the two halves of Pluto’s “heart”, now
informally named Tombaugh Region, seen in the upper
right quadrant of the image.
Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
The photo above shows a composite of four images from New Horizons
that were combined with color data from instruments to create this
sharper global view of Pluto. (The images, taken
when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away from
Pluto, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers).
Image Credit: NASA-JHUAPL-SwRI
The above close up image shows a region near Pluto’s equator that reveals a giant
surprise: a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet
(3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body.
The mountains likely formed no more than 100 million years ago --
mere youngsters relative to the 4.56-billion-year age of the solar
system -- and may still be in the process of building. The mountains are probably composed of Pluto’s water-ice “bedrock.” Although methane and nitrogen ice covers much of the surface of
Pluto, these materials are not strong enough to build the mountains.
Instead, a stiffer material, most likely water-ice, created the peaks. The close-up image was taken about 1.5 hours before New Horizons
closest approach to Pluto, when the craft was 47,800 miles (77,000
kilometers) from the surface of the planet. The image easily resolves
structures smaller than a mile across.
Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
The image above shows a newly discovered mountain range that lies near the southwestern margin
of Pluto’s Tombaugh Region, situated between bright,
icy plains and dark, heavily-cratered terrain. This image was acquired
on July 14,
2015 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers). Features as small as a half-mile (1 kilometer)
across are visible.
These newly-discovered frozen peaks are estimated to be one-half mile
to one mile (1-1.5 kilometers) high, about the same height as the
United States’ Appalachian Mountains. The Norgay
Mountains discovered by New Horizons on July 15 more closely
approximate the height of the taller Rocky Mountains.
“There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger,
frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the
west,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics
and Imaging Team. “There’s a complex interaction going on between the bright
and the dark materials that we’re still trying to understand.”
While Sputnik Planum is believed to be relatively young in geological
terms – perhaps less than 100 million years old - the darker region
probably dates back billions of years. Moore notes that the bright,
sediment-like material appears to be filling in old craters (for
example, the bright circular feature to the lower left of center).
Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Back-lit by the sun, Pluto’s atmosphere rings its silhouette like a
luminous halo in this image taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft
around midnight EDT on July 15. This global portrait of the atmosphere was captured when the spacecraft
was about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Pluto.
